Mercosur is a raw deal for beef, pig, and poultry farms

The EU-Mercosur trade deal is neither fair nor balanced for farmers. It’s just a bad deal designed to present the EU Commission as people who can get ‘the deal done’. Farmers know that’s easy if you are prepared to concede enough. That’s what happened here.

The EU is trying to play down the sheer size and impact of the deal on beef and poultry. The facts are it involves an additional 99,000 tons of beef from Brazil and other Latin America countries. This comes on top of around 230,000 tons of beef they are already sending into our market. In total, the South Americans will have access for around 330,000 tons.