Trade 'war of words' threatens Northern Ireland Protocol

EU rules will forbid shipments of uncooked, chilled meat from the UK into NI, in July

A hard border would threaten the supply of 142 million litres, or 25%, of the milk on supermarket shelves. File Picture. 

With a quarter of our fresh liquid milk market supplied from Northern Ireland, milk distributors fear the threat to the Northern Ireland Protocol, which has prevented a hard border in Ireland after Brexit.

The Protocol is at the centre of a war of words between London and Brussels, with the EU warning it would retaliate if the UK escalates the "sausage war" trade dispute.

Temperatures are rising ahead of July when EU rules will forbid shipments of uncooked, chilled meat from the UK into Northern Ireland.

However, if the worst comes to the worst, and a hard border stops the 700 million litres of annual bulk milk imports from north to south, dairy farmers in the State are ready to fill the liquid milk gap, according to the National Milk Agency.

The Agency is the statutory body for the regulation of the supply of milk for processing for liquid consumption in the State, and it revealed in its recent annual report that loss of an estimated 56m litres of northern milk won’t leave supermarket shelves bare, in the hopefully unlikely event of a border trade war over Brexit.

Southern farmers contracted to supply the fresh liquid milk market all-year-round, or for the winter months only, have more than sufficient milk supplies to satisfy the total fresh milk market requirements in the winter months, even if all imports were interrupted, said the Agency in a timely assurance that there’s no threat to the supply of the one-third of a litre of milk which each of us drinks on average each day.

Cross border

The cross-border milk from Northern Ireland is 92% processed into manufactured dairy products and 8% goes for liquid consumption. 

It is equivalent to 8% of Ireland's annual milk supplies, and 29% of Northern Ireland’s annual milk supplies.

It is one of the most important agri-products which depends on the Northern Ireland Protocol, along with lambs traded from north to south and pigs from south to north.

Its loss would be a major blow for dairy product manufacturers. 

But the National Milk Agency indicates it wouldn't leave empty shelves in the supermarket dairy section, even though it is now established as the source of 25% of our drinking milk.

Hard border 

A hard border would threaten the supply of 142 million litres, or 25%, of the milk on our supermarket shelves. 

That includes 83 million litres packaged outside the State and 59 million litres imported into the State for processing for liquid consumption.

But there is plenty of local milk to replace it. 

Even in the winter months when the Irish milk supply is lowest, our specialist drinking milk producing farmers already deliver a 33% margin of safety of total milk supplies over total consumption.

Processing 

In the 2019/20 milk year, contracts with these 1,338 farmers for 462 million litres of milk for processing for liquid consumption were registered with the Agency. 

Winter months only contracts represented 9% of contracts and 1% of supplies; 91% of contracts and 99% of supplies were all-year-round.

From October 2020 to February 2021, the milk supply of registered producers amounted to 297 million litres.