Ireland fights to retrieve lucrative UK beef market
Ireland fights to retrieve lucrative UK beef market
IRELANDS meat trade is planning a counter-attack over the £2m Buy British beef campaign recently launched by the Meat and Livestock Commission.
A three-pronged strategy "to ensure that Irish beef maintains its traditional presence on the UK market" was agreed at an industry summit meeting in Dublin called by Irelands farm minister Joe Walsh. He is said to be very concerned about the British campaign.
As well as putting their complaints to UK government officials, the Irish initiative will involve a formal complaint to the EU Commission and a communications campaign in Britain to defend Irish beef.
The commission will be asked to decide whether or not Buy British contravenes the EUs single market rules, which allow unrestricted access to the markets of member states.
The campaign in the UK, to be organised by Bord Bia, the Irish Food Board, is expected to concentrate on supermarkets.
The Dublin summit was attended by representatives of producers and processors, as well as by senior Bord Bia officials. A steering committee is to be set up immediately to plan the funding and focus of the new campaign.
The UK is the largest single market for Irish beef, with the trade worth around £200m a year. Both the industry and the minister are alarmed by the MLCs campaign, which they see as an extension of the recent ports blockade. They believe the aim is to squeeze Irish beef out of its 40% share of the UK market.
Mr Walsh said the Irish industry had fought hard over 25 years to develop the "very pivotal and lucrative" British trade. It now faced its greatest ever marketing challenge if it was to avoid being relegated to "a position of residual supplier of lower priced commodity products produced seasonally."
There is particular anger in the Ireland over the advertisements by the Tesco chain pledging support for the Buy British campaign. Tesco recently moved into the Irish market and Mr Walsh warned: "If multiples operating in the Irish market want a level playing pitch, we will want the same thing in Britain."
Tesco executives are understood to have been in touch with the minister, offering reassurances that the companys policy on Irish beef had not changed. *