The Beef Plan petition against the Mercosur deal gathered more than 3,500 signatures and we’ve been working to meet as many TDs and MEPs as possible to present them with a copy of the petition and sound out their position on the deal that has been more than 25 years in the making.
Amongst representatives from mainstream parties, the tune being hummed is the same – we don’t support the draft in its current form. This suggests, of course, that there is a form of the agreement that they will accept. I won’t single out the TD in question because the anti-Irish agriculture position is the same from the majority of the political status quo – when I pressed the point, he said that of course there was a draft of the agreement that they would accept because “it’s not just about agriculture”.
He’s right. It’s not just about agriculture. It’s about democracy and whether it actually exists in the European Union. It’s about having standards and principles that our leadership are prepared to defend. And what the Mercosur deal is proving is that the EU (and the Irish government) does not possess any of these things.
Keeping an open mind….
Michael McGrath, Ireland’s EU Commissioner, has asked that we all keep an open mind on the deal ‘based on the facts’. One of these ‘facts’ that we are expected to view in a positive light is the ‘robust bilateral safeguard mechanism’ included in the agreement if the trade agreement distorts EU beef and poultry markets.
What he doesn’t mention is that rather conveniently for the EU, beef production across Europe has been declining steadily dropping from just over 7 million tonnes in 2018, to 6.64 million tonnes in 2022. Production fell under 6.4 million tonnes in 2023 before rising to just over 6.4 million tonnes in 2024. This decline is expected to continue to at least 2030.
The market has already been distorted by a variety of climate and environmental policies based on questionable accounting of agricultural emissions. In 2003, Ireland’s 3rd Contribution to the United Nations put the writing on the wall for Ireland’s beef industry, listing 5 methane reducing policy initiatives whose beef-centric goals were clear: “These provisions will facilitate a reduction in the numbers of suckler cows, lower the average age of the suckler herd and reduce the number of calves born leading to a reduction in CH4 emissions from the beef sector.“
When you consider that the Mercosur deal was already on the table at the time, it’s interesting that the beef sector was singled out for bearing the brunt of emissions reductions – a beef sector that would later need to shove up and make room for beef from South America, neatly offshoring agricultural emissions and other climate and environmental concerns.
When the Irish government and the EU have finished distorting the market for beef to support their political and commercial goals, how will we prove market distortion by South American beef? A cynical person might think that of course they agreed to those provisions because the chances of them being exercised are vanishingly small.
No safeguards for carbon leakage from beef?
It’s somewhat difficult to wholeheartedly believe in any EU good intentions to protect the beef industry through meaningful safeguards when beef (or indeed any meat) is conspicuously absent from the discussions around the prevention of carbon leakage as a result of international trade agreements.
In 2003, the EU set forth Directive 2003/87/EC which established a scheme for greenhouse gas emission allowance trading within the EU. Article 10b of this Directive required that by 30th June 2010, the Commission would submit “an analytical report assessing the situation with regard to energy-intensive sectors or subsectors that have been determined to be exposed to significant risks of carbon leakage.“
The Carbon Leakage list (2021 – 2030) was published in 2019. Of the 63 products listed, a substantial number are agricultural products or agriculture adjacent – including fertiliser. Several dairy products are included but interestingly, there is a complete absence of any meat products that have been identified as being at risk of carbon leakage.
It might be usefully argued that inclusion of beef or poultry on a list of products deemed to be at risk of carbon leakage might have scuppered the Mercosur deal as it would have provided grounds to exclude them entirely from tariff reductions. What was the argument for excluding them in light of explicit plans to increase exports from a country with higher emissions?
Climate, environmental and public health standards:
Much of the regulation and restrictions imposed on beef farmers that stand as the primary cause of the declines have been justified on the basis of safeguarding public health and saving the planet. The Mercosur deal illustrates that the EU don’t really care about any of these things.
In 2019, the Mercosur deal was agreed in principle and since then, cattle numbers in Brazil have been increasing. In 2024, the Irish Farmer’s Journal reported that the Brazilian cattle herd is expected to grow by 28 million head in the next decade. An estimated 43% of the country’s cattle herds are located in the Amazon. From a climate and environmental perspective, the Mercosur deal is a disaster of epic proportions.
Through the lens of public health, cattle management in these countries has a spectacularly unimpressive record on issues with hormones and medications going back decades. Yesterday, The Journal reported: “European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the EU agrifood sector will “immediately reap the benefits of lower tariffs and lower costs”. The Commission has denied that the deal will lead to cheap imports of South American beef or poultry that do not meet the EU’s green and food safety standards.”
There’s a slight problem with those statements. Imports of South American beef and poultry that do not meet the EU’s green and food safety standards are already here. All the Mercosur deal does is make them cheaper. It would take years of work to raise standards in Mercosur countries to match standards imposed in livelihood-ending ways here and across Europe. The political gaslighting on this deal is very, very real.
Implications for democracy:
We’ve all known for quite some time that representative democracy (as anything other than a dog and pony show for the locals) has been replaced by ‘stakeholder democracy’ – a new system in which corporate interests and NGO activity have far more sway in policy direction than the views of the majority of any given electorate.
Wednesday’s activities confirmed that while national parliaments will have a role in agreeing the framework for the Mercosur deal, the trade portion of the agreement has been taken out of their hands and now merely rests with the Council of Ministers and the European Parliament for ratification. The EU has stated that trade is within the EU’s own exclusive competence and is not a shared competence with Member States.
All of which raises the question: Who is ‘the European Union’?
The European Union is supposed to be a group of member countries working together with a shared set of values and laws, supported by a single currency and free movement and trade. If there is a ‘European Union’ that can move to exclude the views and votes of all the national parliaments in such a critical and contentious deal, then who is the ‘European Union’?
The latest movements on the Mercosur deal indicate that there is a body within the European Union that considers itself above needing agreement with Member States to take desired actions and that is a very dangerous position indeed.
Where are the environmental NGO sector?
Given the hysterical shrieking that reaches a fever pitch whenever the Irish agricultural sector makes positive progress in any direction, you might anticipate that the Irish environmental NGO industry would be filling the airwaves and taping themselves to wall of Leinster House or some such activity.
It appears that they have written some letters. Those might even have been strongly worded letters, laughably expressing concerns about the Irish farmers (although only the small farmers, of course) and environmental issues associated with the Amazon rainforest.
In their defence, they are very busy with their primary focus on ensuring that the calculations for methane emissions from cattle are not updated in line with IPCC findings because that would make it more difficult for Ireland to reach climate goals. The scientists are arguing that we shouldn’t follow science because the science is unscientific if it doesn’t support existing policy.
And thus the kaleidoscope of utter nonsense that we are supposed to accept as rational leadership and policy making is complete.