It is easy to forget that when a country trades extensively with the rest of the world it is obliged to treat other people's environmental standards in just as sacrosanct a fashion as its own. Nowhere is this more true than of food products. We in Ireland should be more aware of this than most, given that 80 per cent of Irish cattle are exported. Many of them go to Russia, which has become a very important market for the Irish industry. All the more reason to welcome the insistence of the Russian authorities on the maintenance of rigorous standards for the control of BSE, as the director of the Agricultural Ministry's veterinary service, Mr Yacheslav Avilov, underlines in a forthright interview with this newspaper today.
"We keep a close watch on the situation and we have data on BSE outbreaks throughout Ireland," he said. He stood over Mr Ivan Yates's decision to impose a ban on cattle exports from the three counties of Cork, Tipperary and Monaghan and confirmed that the alternative was a ban on cattle exports from the whole State. It was only because of long standing good relations between the two ministries of agriculture that such a total ban was avoided, according to Mr Avilov, adding that "we would have been totally justified in imposing a complete ban". in the circumstances, he believes Mr Yates performed something of a miracle in so limiting it. One might add that given the previous dreadful experience of Russia with exports of Irish beef, as revealed by the Tribunal of Enquiry into the Beef Industry, we must be grateful for the good work that has gone into repairing those relations in the last few years.
Mr Avilov points out that the more complaint and bluster there is from Irish farming organisations about the selective ban, the more attention is drawn to it in the Russian media, and the more the demand there for a total ban is likely to increase. It is as well to remember that recently, Russia has a good record of stringent standards in food controls, which have been built up as their meat imports have increased. It is therefore also as well to listen carefully to Mr Avilov's criticisms of the failure to implement the ban on bonemeal imposed here in 1990. He suggests this is to blame for the sharp increase in the incidence of BSE over the summer months, which led in turn to the actions taken by his government.
The BSE crisis has been a disaster for the beef industry throughout Europe, whether seen from the point of view of producers or consumers. it is essential to ensure that stringent steps are taken on a co operative basis to eliminate the disease and restore consumer confidence in beef. Rather than concentrating their fire on the essentially tactical question of whether Mr Yates should have agreed to the selective ban on exports, farmers' leaders would be better advised to pool their resources and their ire on ensuring the elimination of the disease from Irish herds. This must include the most rigorous enforcement of standards, including the ban on bonemeal feed stuffs, the failure of which may well be responsible for the sudden increase in the number of diseased animals reported over the summer and autumn months. This is not a function of Russian imagination but of Irish reality, for which the industry itself must shoulder the blame, however low the basic figures for the disease are.
There is also more than a whiff of dirigisme in the demands that the Government should have adopted a tougher approach to the Russians on this occasion - and in wider demands that farmers should be fully protected from the operation of market forces during the BSE crisis. This is perhaps to be expected from an agricultural industry that relies on EU transfers for a good half of its income and which appears to expect to be insulated from market forces rather than preparing itself for its full rigours as other sectors are called on by its leaders to do. It is a nice irony that it should take a Russian official to remind Irish farmers that realities have changed in a more competitive world.