Bord Bia
Dail Éireann — 2026-07-09
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Martin Kenny (SF), Sligo-Leitrim

I appreciate all that and the farmers forum is a positive advancement on things, but we are back to the problem at the very core of this issue, which is that the chair of Bord Bia has been using imported beef from Brazil as part of his mix to sell product. This is at the same time that Irish farmers, Irish consumers and European consumers have serious difficulties with that product. The European Commission has gone so far as to ban the importation of Brazilian beef, notwithstanding the Mercosur trade agreement, and it did that because the product simply cannot meet the standards. That huge problem remains. The report does not deal with that, and that is the difficulty that farmers have here. The report has the 22 recommendations in regard to governance, but this is not actually about the governance. That was very clear from the beginning. The problem is that the chair of the organisation that is marketing Irish food globally is also using a product that flies in the face of the quality standards we have in Ireland and, indeed, he was not even a member of Origin Green.

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Record URI: https://data.oireachtas.ie/akn/ie/debateRecord/dail/2026-07-09/debate/main
Retrieved: 2026-09-14T01:01:07+00:00
Sitting date: 2026-07-09