WTO enough to deal with
It was insensitive of Environment Minister Dick Roche to rush to sign the Directive into law before Christmas.
It wouldn’t happen in our software or pharmaceutical industries, nor construction either.
This is the equivalent - for our pharmaceutical industry, for example - of the Government imposing a zero emissions clampdown at the same time as the EU doubles the low corporation tax rate which helps to keep this industry in Ireland.
Thankfully, neither of these policy decisions is imminent.
Instead, the pharmaceutical industry is forging ahead, with Amgen bringing 1,500 jobs to Ireland because of our thriving biotechnology community, infrastructure for biologics manufacturing, emphasis on education, attractive business climate, and strong Government support.
They are also in Ireland because of opposition from Swiss environmentalists, and 2,000 marching in protest against their plans to build the plant in a rural area of Fribourg in Switzerland.
There are no such environmentalist worries about their building on a Co Cork farm.
Instead, the full force of Government is busily employed in outlawing any farming activities whatsoever that might damage our already high water quality - even though these farming activities will be largely phased out anyway, if the EU’s offer to open its borders to food imports is accepted in World Trade Organisation talks in the next few months.
No wonder farmers were taken by surprise when Minister Roche signed the Nitrates Regulations into law on December 12.
Just six weeks previously, Meat Industry Ireland, which represents meat processors, said the beef and lamb sectors in the EU could not sustain the EU’s offer in world trade talks.
If agreed, said the MII, the offer would have serious consequences for beef and lamb farming and processing in Ireland.
Minister Roche didn’t seem to care, and went ahead with legislation which, according to senior Teagasc researchers, is an overkill compared to our water quality requirements, and poses major problems for pig farmers.
If Dick Roche doesn’t get farmers, Peter Mandelson will.
The EU Trade Commissioner made it clear in his speech last Monday to the UK National Farmer’s Union Conference that EU farming in its current shape is expendable in world trade talks.
World trade ministers have set a deadline of April 30 for formulas to reducing tariffs on agriculture and manufactured goods, so that they can finish negotiations by the end of this year, to give President George W Bush time to push an agreement through Congress before his trade-negotiating authority expires in mid-2007.
Revealing his hoped-for world trade scenario, EU Trade Commissioner said Europe will become a top-quality, knowledge-intensive, innovation-leading provider of industrial goods, services and food, while China becomes the industrial workshop, India a great service provider, and Brazil the most competitive supplier of bulk commodities.
He said EU farmers simply cannot compete in the long run with third country producers in Brazil, Argentina or elsewhere - thus writing off most of Ireland’s farm and food industry, unless it can overnight convert to the high-value added future Mandelson sees for EU farming.
European farming has to change along these lines, WTO or no WTO, says the EU Trade Commissioner.
Unfortunately, Environment Minister Dick Roche mustn’t be listening.
If he was, he’d wait a few months to see if Irish farming has any future, before he’d start tinkering with it.
There will be no need for the nitrates row Minister Roche is stuck in, if the WTO hands our agricultural commodity business over to South America, because about three quarters of our livestock would become immediately redundant.
