Traumatised by bureaucracy
The Directive says all medicines for food producing animals must be subject to prescription, unless member states agree exemptions.
The Minister says there will be full consultations with all stakeholders, before final decisions are taken.
It all sounds pretty harmless, and the Minister might have thought farmers were ready for a little extra regulation, after the Government had lifted the weight of 800,000 premium scheme applications per year off their backs, by decoupling 100% of these payment schemes.
But it seems that farmers were so traumatised by their experiences in the premium schemes that they have become allergic to officialdom.
You know that bureaucracy is still the No 1 bugbear for farmers when the three candidates for the IFA presidency build their campaigns around it.
That should be no surprise to anyone who puts themselves in the farmer’s place.
Decoupling may be trumpeted as the freedom to farm after being imprisoned for years by the red tape surrounding e1.3bn per year of subsidies.
But the actions of over-zealous inspectors have left farmers scarred.
Meanwhile, they have seen their markets damaged by importation of non-EU produce, and know very well that these imported products cannot have been subject to the same level of control as EU production.
Now the farmers see more legislation on the way which could greatly increase the cost of looking after livestock, and thus render their produce even less competitive against imports.
It’s the last thing farmers want from a Government which, according to IFA candidate Ruidhri Deasy, already has a stranglehold of bureaucracy on farmers. Speaking in an Irish Examiner organised debate at the Ploughing Championships, he said farmers own their land and will not be driven off it by men in white coats - a reference to the Department of Agriculture’s 4,200 employees, one for every 35 farmers, Deasy pointed out.
Raymond O’Malley said regulation costs farmers €1.37bn per year, when all their time is added up, and regulations already add €100m to veterinary bills.
Candidate Padraig Walshe told farmers at the Ploughing that over-regulation by the Department killed off many of the small abattoirs which had boosted demand and prices for farmers’ cattle in the marts, even while the same regulations were ignored on the continent of Europe.
No doubt farmers would agree with his call to send inspectors to test imported food instead of hounding farmers.
He warned the minister that signing Prescription Only Medicines into Irish law would mean she’s saying farmers are not professional keepers of animals.
She says she wants to protect public and animal health, maintain appropriate competition in the market place, and avoid imposing unnecessary costs on farmers: it will be one of her most difficult tasks yet to satisfy all three objectives.
