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Dáil Éireann díospóireacht -
Tuesday, 5 Nov 2002

Vol. 556 No. 3

Written Answers. - Cattle Prices.

Brian O'Shea

Ceist:

251 Mr. O'Shea asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the proposals the has to seek the introduction of an EU wide beef price transparency mechanism. [20248/02]

Since February 2000, my Department has published on a weekly basis, prices paid by individual named meat plants for all grades and categories of cattle. This initiative introduced a new degree of price transparency into the market which has been extremely useful to farmers in their decisions relating to the disposal of their stock.

As far as market price transparency is concerned, my Department endeavored over a lengthy period in 1999 and 2000, through the monitoring committee on the report of the beef task force, to secure the agreement of all of the interests in the beef industry to a voluntary price transparency mechanism. While substantial progress was made on a price transparency model, the industry, however, was unable to reach agreement on the issue of independent verification.

There is already a cattle price reporting mechanism in place at EU level which allows for comparability of prices for similar quality cattle on an EU wide basis. The extension of such a mechanism to market returns at EU level is not appropriate and I have not made any representations to the EU for the introduction of such a mechanism.

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