Door open for beef imports
But it has not come without a cost; the EU is now on the verge of becoming a net importer of beef, so it's high time that its cattle farmers saw some promise of a financially rewarding future.
In its latest forecast for 2003 to 2010, the European Commission stated that beef consumption will exceed production in the EU for the first time in more than 20 years, and predicted a 7% rise in beef prices.
In the same report, the Commission said beef imports are projected to continue to increase, and the EU 15 will soon be importing slightly more beef than it exports.
It sounds like good news for European cattle farmers.
Or it could leave Europe's food industry baying for beef in 2005, leaving the political climate may be just right for the EU to lower trade barriers to solve its meat shortage, in the context of world trade talks, which are not likely to resume in earnest until 2005.
Already, Agriculture Commissioner Franz Fischler has said the EU is prepared to discuss the elimination of agricultural export subsidies on all farm products, in WTO talks.
But there's more good news; Over Thirty Months Cattle from the UK are not now expected to hit the market in 2004.
And Ireland is readier than many competitors to take advantage, with our cattle traceability apparently now the envy of other beef producing countries.
That's according to no less an authority than the US Government, impressed by Ireland's ability to rebound from the depths of the BSE crisis to regain markets, even though it is rated as a high risk origin.
The US agricultural attache here has reported back to Washington how our traceability has been instrumental in our regaining access to important international markets, temporarily closed due to fears of animal diseases, especially BSE.
Particularly impressive was Russia allowing in Irish beef while still maintaining a ban on meat or animals from other high BSE-risk countries.
They were reassured by our active animal identification and tracing system so the extra paperwork is paying off for farmers, in our computerised cattle movement monitoring system, operated in conjunction with manual and computerised recording systems from the farm through the slaughter plant.
As for live export prospects, the EU seems ready to negotiate away the refunds which make sales to non-EU destinations possible. And the future of live exports to other EU member states will not be clear until after the EU farm council meeting in Luxembourg on April 26.
The European Commission wants a maximum journey time of nine hours, followed by a 12-hour rest, before the journey can continue.
But the European Parliament wants a maximum journey time of eight hours, end of story, and have called for animals to be slaughtered as close to the point of origin as possible.
But EU farm ministers will ultimately decide the issue, and with at least six member states happy with the current rules and three seemingly neutral, there is a good chance of an outcome favourable to Irish exporters.
If all the prospects for 2004 come to fruition farmers will soon be seeing some cattle prices not heard of since the mid-90s.
But they will have to wait until well into 2005 for the WTO talks before they can hope for a longer term return to high cattle prices.
