Tim Cullinan, the president of the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA), is urging all meat processors to “immediately act” on the Aids to Private Storage (APS) schemes from the European Commission.
Yesterday, Wednesday, April 22, details of the commission’s €80 million support package emerged aimed at providing stability to future prices and production to stabilise food supplies and food security.
On the sheepmeat there is aid for a maximum of 36,000t to be kept in storage for a minimum of three months to a maximum of five months; with a total budget of €20 million.
While Cullinan – who took part in a video conference with EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development Janusz Wojciechowski and the bloc’s other EU farm presidents yesterday – says the total amount is “completely insufficient” to tackle the scale of the Covid-19 impact, he says factories need to move on the APS scheme without delay.
“It’s no where near what’s needed; it amounts to less than €8 for every farmer in Europe and we fully intend to go back to the table with the commission.
But at least it is a start. The commission now realises that there is a problem – the commissioner didn’t seem to realise the seriousness of the situation.
Highlighting last week’s beef kill when some 25,225 cattle were processed in Department of Agriculture approved beef export plants, Cullinan said the APS scheme should put processors in a position to increase the current €3.40/kg price for in-spec prime cattle.
“There is a serious problem with steak cuts and there is an opportunity now for the processors to put some of that into storage immediately.
I spoke to the three main processors before we went looking for an Aids to Private Storage Scheme and they all agreed that it was worth pursuing.
“We need the meat processors to act on price. Everybody in the sector needs to take some of the pain here. There are huge costs mounting up at farm level with some cattle going out of spec – that has to be alleviated.
“We have a model here that we can work on; we’ll try to improve on the situation and we’ll go back for more. But the factories need to get their applications together and take up this offer from the commission,” he said.
Meat industry response
Responding to the EU’s support measures for the sector, Meat Industry Ireland (MII) stated that it “falls short”.
In a statement MII said: “While it is important that the European Commission is now engaging on supports to address the major market disruption caused by Covid-19, based on initial information on the level of supports in the meat sector, the proposed measures fall well short of what is needed to tackle the extent of the problem and scale of market imbalance, particularly for beef.”