THE Minister for Agriculture, Mr Yates, is seeking approval for a one-off payment to compensate beef farmers affected by the BSE crisis. The payment, of one billion ECUs, or £800 million, would have to be approved by the European Commission as well as other EU member states.
Mr Yates was speaking at a meeting in Dublin of the presidium of COPA, the organisation of European farming groups.
Mr Yates told journalists he was not contemplating any rowing back on the Florence agreement, which stipulated a UK culling of 140,000 head of cattle.
The president of COPA, Sir David Naish, who is also president of the British National Farmers Union, said he was pleased at the degree of unanimity that existed between the various organisations.
He said anything that brought forward the date when the ban on beef could be lifted was to be supported. The Florence agreement, he believed, had always been a political expedient rather than being based on science. However, he supported it on the basis that the culling would bring forward the date on which the ban could be lifted.
Since then the proof of maternal transmission of BSE meant that the culling now had a scientific basis.
Sir David described the BSE crisis as on par with Chernobyl. Funding to cope with it could not come from the farm budget or any other budget. It had to be funded by the EU as a whole.
The president of the Irish Farmers Association, Mr John Donnelly, said the 15 organisations present had flatly rejected the EU Commission's approach of "raiding the grain budget in CAP in order to fund the crisis in the beef sector".
Every European political leader would have to take their responsibilities to the agricultural sector seriously by "creating a new and additional EU fund to tackle the BSE problem. This is essential to limit the damage the crisis is inflicting upon the economies and rural communities in the 15 member states." Mr Yates said the council adopted a package in June to compensate beef producers for losses arising from the crisis, but it was necessary for further measures to be taken to adapt the beef regime to the changed situation arising from the substantial fall in consumption.
Proposals from the Commission would be discussed at the Council of Ministers next week, but an opinion from the European Parliament was still awaited. Some stability in the market was maintained by 300,000 tonnes which had been bought into intervention.
Funds agreed in June had gone some way towards making up for income losses. The EU had a surplus of about 750,000 tonnes of beef this year. A similar surplus would arise next year, Mr Yates said.
Beef consumption remained "stubbornly" low and "it is unlikely that we will see the same quantities of beef being consumed ever again in the EU".