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LAST UPDATE | 5 Dec 2019
THE TAOISEACH HAS said he sympathises with farmers who are staging a protest over beef prices outside an Aldi distribution centre in Naas, Co Kildare.
The protest by the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA) began at 7am and is expected to last for 12 hours. Farmers are blocking the entrance and exit at the site.
Speaking about the protest, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said prices during the summer were very low, but were still “pretty much of the European average”.
“Things have actually deteriorated since that, we find now that Irish farmers are getting a price for beef at the factory gate that is lower than the European average and that doesn’t seem fair to me,” he said.
“I think we need to give the Beef Taskforce a chance to do its work. But I don’t see any reasonable justification as to why Irish farmers should be getting a lower price than the European average when only a few months ago they were getting the average price.”
The facility where the protest is taking place is one of Aldi’s two national distribution centres – the other is in Mitchelstown, Co Cork – and delivers produce to stores in several counties.
‘Short-changed’
The IFA, the largest farming organisation in the country, said it is “demanding a significant and immediate beef price increase to bring the Irish beef price at least in line with the Bord Bia European Export Benchmark Price Index”.
The group has accused retailers such as Aldi of driving down food prices, with farmers being the ones who lose out.
IFA President Joe Healy said farmers are sick of “being short-changed” by meat factories and retailers.
“The supply chain is delivering mega profits for factories and retailers at the expense of farmers. We can have all the reviews we like, but farmers need a price increase now,” he said in a statement issued this morning.
Before any talks last August, we insisted that the retailers had to be present, but they refused to take part. They have a dominant role in a dysfunctional food chain and they have to be held to account.
Farmers in Ireland receive less money for their cattle than their British and EU counterparts. Irish prices are 20c/kg or €80 per animal behind the Bord Bia price tracker, and 50c/kg or €180 behind the UK price.
“Farmers won’t accept any more stalling or a Mickey Mouse price increase. There is no reason why we shouldn’t be at the EU Export Benchmark Price.
“We will continue to take action until processors give a significant price increase,” Healy said in a statement.
There have been a number of protests by farmers outside meat processing plants in recent months, but this is the first blockade organised by the IFA.
The government’s Beef Market Taskforce held its first meeting on Tuesday. The group was set to meet in mid-October but was prevented from doing so after protesters blocked industry representatives from entering the Department of Agriculture.
‘Extremely disappointed’
A spokesperson for Aldi said the company is “extremely disappointed” by today’s protest.
“We welcomed the resumption of the Beef Taskforce this week and have engaged openly with farmer representative organisations on the beef issue over recent months.
He said Aldi has received no request for engagement on this issue from any member of the IFA leadership.
He also said the company has not received any communication about specific concerns about the mechanics of the beef market, including age specification and no warning of any grievance the IFA had before this morning.
“Aldi is fully committed to cooperating with the Beef Taskforce and met with the one of the representative groups, the BPM, as recently as last week to further update our position.”
The spokesperson said Aldi has initiated research on “a wide range of beef products to determine a number of issues”.
“We remain committed to reporting back through the Taskforce and playing a fulsome role in the process. Any action outside of this process is short-sighted and not constructive,” he added.
In an exchange, which was played on Morning Ireland, between farmers and truckers outside the Aldi facility one trucker expressed his anger at being blocked from entering the site. “All joking aside, have ye not cattle to be minding at home?,” he said.
A farmer replied by saying: “We have but what’s the point in minding them when we’re getting robbed in the factories? You’re unfortunately caught in the middle.”
The trucker then stated: “The haulage industry is as bad as farming, it’s on a knife-edge the whole”, adding: “you’re stopping us from getting paid”.
The taskforce was agreed to by beef farmers and organisations, and representatives of the beef processing sector, in October following weeks of protests.
It’s one of a number of measures, along with a new bonus payment for quality assured cattle, which was set out in a deal brokered by Agriculture Minister Michael Creed.
Farmers had accepted the deal in exchange for the meat industry dropping all legal actions brought against protesting farmers who blockaded the gates of processing plants.
Speaking ahead of Tuesday’s meeting, IFA National Livestock Committee Chairman Angus Woods said farmers won’t tolerate the taskforce becoming “another talking shop” and that is “must deliver real results on cattle price and market transparency to quell farmer anger”.
- With reporting by Michelle Hennessy.
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Bulgaria has one of the lowest vaccine uptakes in Europe. Only 28% of the population vaccinated with an extremely high case fatality rate in comparison to Ireland. Their population is only a little bigger than Ireland, and despite having lower reported case numbers – they are at upwards of 100 deaths per day.
So anyone questioning whether vaccines work, here’s your answer.
@Seán Ó Briain: They have amongst Europe’s highest death toll per head of population, with 30,530 official COVID-19 deaths and 60,140 excess deaths. They have a population only a little bigger than us, 6.9 million, that’s like us having 22,000 COVID-19 deaths and 43,000 excess deaths.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
@Colin Conlan: “However Bulgaria’s number of cases in past six months was half of Ireland’s”
Their “reported” cases.
Aren’t your kind always harping on about “only deaths matter, not cases”?
Well for a population similar to Ireland’s, they’ve had over 5 times the amount of deaths as us.
@Colin Conlan: That is misinformation of course, they had 12,017 COVID-19 deaths in the last 6 months, 778 deaths in January (564 deaths if they were same population of Ireland, but we announced 123 deaths). Their deaths in Jan were 5.6-fold ours.
https://www.google.com/search?channel=crow5&client=firefox-b-d&q=covid+bulgaria
@David Jordan: Please pay closer attention to my comment. I referred to *cases* not *deaths*.
Around 1st of July 2021 they had 422k total cases. Now they have about 800k cases.
Ireland had around 1st of July 2021 272k total cases. Now it reached 1mil.
@Colin Conlan: Are the testing as much as us?
@Colin Conlan: Also, one other thing, do you honestly think that Bulgarians equally enthusiastic about getting COVID tested as us, given their very high rates of vaccine scepticism and anti-everything?
@David Jordan: Yes, they are testing as much as Ireland. However! The correct question is: Are people there going to be tested? I could not answer that with data. But I have my suspicion that answer is no. So I will double their case numbers. They have about 50% rural population.
In that case the number of positives are same as Ireland. Which makes sense. And still vaccines does not seem to have an impact on protecting others.
Something else interesting. The Delta wave took much less time. Just over a month. Ireland is dragging Delta since Sept until now into Omicron.
@Colin Conlan: And to continue on the aspect that Delta wave took much less in Bulgaria. Number of deaths presented here as argument were per unit of time at peak. Since the Delta wave spanned on different lengths of time between Bulgaria and Ireland it is interesting to calculate the amount of deaths per wave rather than per time unit at peak.
@Colin Conlan: Delta was dragged out because vaccines were reducing infection rates, it reduced infections by 50 – 80% (Qatar data), but you are right, Omicron is transparent to vaccines.
At this point, now Omicron is dominant, Vaccines prevent serious symptoms and save lives but they no longer prevent infections getting passed on. That is why we are riddled, but have very few deaths (Omicron is also intrinsically milder).
So I agree you, at this point, vaccination no longer protects others, that benefit is no longer there e.g. if I’m vaccinated and visit an unvaccinated Bulgarian relative, I could infect them. Thankfully Omicron is mild (we’re very lucky, it could have gotten worse).
That said, Omicron arrived in Bulgaria only 2 weeks ago, this you can see from the huge spike they had since the new year.
Hopefully it will quickly displaces Delta and reduces deaths.
@Colin Conlan: Also, look at Gibraltar and COVID:
https://www.google.com/search?channel=crow5&client=firefox-b-d&q=gibratar+covid
100% fully vaccinated, 81% got boosters, but they are riddled with Omicron. But the important thing, no more deaths.
@David Jordan: Is not clear what argument you have there. Delta wave finished clearly in Bulgaria before Omicron arrived. There’s nothing to “displace” there.
https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=irl&areas=bgr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usvt&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=usky&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=usmi&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-08-01&values=cases
On 28th of Dec before Omicron rocketed number of cases, Bulgaria had 17.6/100k a day. Something that Ireland didn’t have since July.
@Colin Conlan: Yes, 2 weeks ago Omicron arrived. We’re not disagreeing here, deaths are falling despite rapidly rising cases, Omicron is milder and it likely heralds the end of the Pandemic. I’m not arguing with you.
I think if things don’t change, I mean if a worse variant does not show up, by next winter, I think it would be best if Omicron specific vaccines, possibly combined with the flu vaccine, are recommended for >65s, like the flu vaccine is today.
@Seán Ó Briain: have you shares in the vaccine or what? It’s their choice if they want to take it or not
Why is the title of this article misleading?
Protesters are anti-restrictions not anti-vaccine!
@Colin Conlan: False. They are anti everything. Anti-mask, anti-restrictions and anti-vaccine – despite having barely no one vaccinated and their hospitals full of covid patients with 100+ people dying every day there, despite their population being able the same as the island of Ireland.
Nothing misleading about the article.
@Seán Ó Briain: To protest anti-vaccine exceeds individual level. To protest against vaccine mandates does not exceed individual level. No one there protests that *other* citizens of Bulgaria should not be vaccinated.
Conclusion: they are not “anti-vaxxers” but anti restriction on personal level.
@Colin Conlan: They aren’t protesters either but rioters, once you turn violent you are no longer protesting, just look at the BLM riots.
Deep suspicion of anything coming from the Bulgarian government is a legacy of the soviet era, as well as the population’s sorry experience of government corruption since that time.
@John Mulligan: Agreed. I knew a Czech citizen whose conditioning was to distrust anything the Irish government, or any government said, but who would immediately accept any medical conspiracy theory they came across on YouTube, without doing any checking into the background of the YouTube speaker or channel, or anything they said. And their brother was a surgeon in the Czech Republic!!!! They didn’t put the same kind of faith in what their brother told them.
@David A. Murray: misinformation and suspicion is a major problem in Eastern Europe. Anti everything and pro nothing apart from conspiracy theory’s. Obviously not all of them but a large chunk of them. Victim complex across the whole region.
Bulgaria is a country many Irish people only know from going there for packaged summer holidays on chartered Balkan Airlines flights. Groups of schoolchildren and adults in winter also flew to the country for cheap ski holidays. Some of the country’s red wines have been found to be tasty and cheap. Before the early 1990s it was very much a conforming member of the Soviet bloc. What sort of regime rules there nowadays?
@Garreth Byrne: Since you are asking, there was 3 elections in 2021, and only after the last one there was a wide enough coalition to form a government. Basically, everybody who was against GERB, a populist party that ruled for 10 years, joined that coalition. GERB’s leader Boiko Borisov is a bit like Berlusconi, I think. No discernible policies apart from to make him and his chums rich.
Nuke em…
have your say