Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) President John Dillon has called on the Taoiseach to stop the "sell-out" of Irish farmers by EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson.
Mr Dillon was addressing around 5,000 farmers at an IFA protest outside the EU Commission offices in Dublin city centre today.
The farmers are protesting against the agricultural concessions being offered by EU trade commissioner Mr Mandelson in the run-up to the world trade talks in Hong Kong next month.
Mr Dillon said the European food market would be flooded by cheaper foreign imports produced by slave labour. He called on the Taoiseach to make the Government's position on the world trade talks clear.
"There is only one place for Bertie Ahern. That's beside Jacques Chirac, the only European leader who is prepared to stand up to Peter Mandelson," he said.
"Tony Blair has tried many times to destroy the Common Agricultural Policy (Cap) in the past 10 years. When he failed at the Heads of Government, he sent his lapdog Mandelson to Brussels to destroy the Cap by the back door in the WTO."
Mr Dillon said there was a commitment in the Cap reform that European farmers would supply European consumers and family farming would be secure until 2013.
"The new CAP is not one year in existence and politicians are back again, breaking their word," he said.
He called on Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan and the Council of Agriculture Ministers to tear up Mr Mandelson's mandate as he was "hell-bent on imposing Britain's cheap food policy on Europe."
"If Mandelson gets his way, Irish farm income will be cut by €800 million. That's a 35 per cent cut. It would bring the average family farm income to about €10,000 a year. That's €4.80 per hour which is far below the minimum wage of €7.65," he warned.
The IFA president went on to accuse Peter Mandelson of "throwing open the European food market to all-comers with a 46 per cent cut in import tariffs."
"Under Mandelson, Europe will become the dumping ground of the world food market where there will be no control over quality, no tagging and no food traceability," he said.
He warned the consequences of such a policy would be greater exposure to food-and-mouth disease, swine fever, avian flu.