As a professional lobbyist, Declan O'Brien finds himself at odds with the stance adopted by the Government and the EU on rejecting hormone-treated beef from the US. He is the director of the five-year-old trade association, the Animal and Plant Health Association (APHA), representing 31 agri-chemical and veterinary drugs companies. They include Monsanto, which is carrying out field trials on genetically modified crops, and stands out as the bete noire of the green movement.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Mr O'Brien is also in favour of BST, a drug which increases milk yields in cattle, certain antibiotics which have found themselves on the banned list and pesticides.

"People will lobby actively against using pesticides, saying they are bad for you. That is ignoring the way they are licensed and monitored and bring food to you at a reasonable cost. But that part of the equation is thrown in the bin."

In the case of the banned substances, he says scientists have declared them to be safe but politicians have adopted a different stance. "The public is saying, `Who do we trust? The scientists seem to have got it wrong because the politicians are doing something different to what the scientists said."

The most contentious issue in recent times has been the debate on genetically modified (GM) foods. Mr O'Brien says GM technology will be necessary to increase food volumes and produce crops "on more marginal land" to feed the rapidly expanding world population. "In order to feed 10 billion people we will need at least to double our food production in the next 30 odd years, and that is quite a change no matter how you look at it, so we are going to have to get our hands on all the technology we can in order to do that." Mr O'Brien grew up on a dairy and sheep farm near Kill in Co Meath and subsequently studied Agricultural Science in UCD.

He began his career with the now defunct Tara Co-operative in Co Kildare, introducing and promoting rape seed as a commercial crop, "something very innovative at that stage".

The plant was grown in Ireland in the 18th century but the propagation method had to be learnt anew amid generous incentives from Europe.

His love affair with rape seed began when he did a masters on the production methods for the vegetable oil-producing plant. "I really had no practical knowledge about crops. It would not have been my first love but suddenly it turned into everything I did and I am delighted I did it."

He also worked for the German chemicals group, BASF, as a technical and sales representative. It involved the seeking of licences for new products and he was also responsible for sales in the southern half of the country. "I got a chance to do everything and I had to do everything."

Currently, the refusal by the EU to allow the importation of US beef has resulted in a trade war which, although not seriously affecting Irish producers yet, is hitting their European neighbours.

The subject is not, however, a delicate one. Bulls lose their natural ability to produce hormones because they are castrated. "From a human safety point of view, you cannot walk into a field of bulls," Mr O'Brien points out. Other EU countries rear bulls indoors when they become aggressive. In the Republic, where bulls are not reared to maturity, the result is that beef cattle take longer to reach a marketable weight, with more feed needed, and the product of lesser quality with a higher fat content. "We have cattle that grade poorly versus other European countries," he says.

In any case, hormone-treated beef was legal in the State until 1987, he adds. "The ban on hormones was a political issue, not a safety issue and all the scientific evidence in the world was ignored."

He is looking to the State's new EU commissioner, Mr David Byrne, to set about establishing the EU equivalent of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after the Commission president-designate, Mr Romano Prodi, said such an agency would be crucial to rebuilding the confidence of consumers. Mr O'Brien says such an agency is necessary if the EU is not to return to a protectionist-type, "Fortress Europe" model. "The American consumer has absolute trust in the FDA. If the FDA says something, there is no controversy in the States about it. In the EU, there is no equivalent body."

He says politicians are holding onto power and pursuing their own ends with national political and economic issues. "National political issues and national economic issues should have nothing to do with food policy."

A food and drug agency should be modelled on the FDA, he believes, particularly as in the current environment, both scientists and politicians are distrusted by consumers. Closer to home, he points to the Food Safety Authority of Ireland which is "very objective in their decision-making" and has come out in favour of GM foods. "They have had the guts to stand by that opinion and to defend it very robustly when it has been criticised."

He believes the time now is right for such an agency although "politically it will be a huge turnaround for Europe".

"We think we are in a dead end as far as the World Trade Organisation is concerned. We are heading from crisis to crisis and court battle to court battle with the other partners in the EU."

Another unresolved issue at EU level is the one of establishing a Maximum Residue Limit (MRL) for animal medicines, a complex process of setting the time by which medicine traces have left the animal's organs and tissues.

Currently, January 1st is the cut-off date for establishing such limits, applying to all animals which go into the human food chain, including minor ones such as horse, deer, rabbit, ostrich and goat. APHA is arguing that this will make it prohibitively expensive to produce medicines to treat minor groups and wants MRL levels to apply on a cross-species basis. Otherwise, in the Irish contest, the Irish equine industry would be the one most dramatically affected. "Who is going to license an anaesthetic for a horse?" Mr O'Brien asks.

With an annual budget of £300,000 (€380,921), APHA has three full-time staff engaged in getting its views across to policy makers and liaising with similar organisations through the European Crop Production Association and FEDESA, the European Federation of Animal Health. "It is a way of getting information at a very early stage about what is happening in Brussels regarding legislation."

For lobbying purposes, he says he has firstly to understand what his members want, which involves meetings with sub-groups, before he approaches TDs, MEPs or the EU commissioners. "If they do not understand our views, I am not doing my job properly."