ICMSA welcome deferral of Deforestation Regulations but still want them substantially changed

The Chairperson of ICMSA’s Livestock Committee, Michael O’Connell, has welcomed the announcement that the EU Commission intends deferring the application of the news Deforestation Regulation by a further 12 months. Mr. O’Connell said that the announcement was no more than a belated realisation that it was no longer acceptable – “if ever it was” – to keep on expecting farmers to submit more and more details about their farms when all the relevant information was already in the Commission’s files.

“Obviously ICMSA had rejected the frankly silly proposal that farmers selling an animal would have to produce a DDS (Due Diligence Statement) confirming that the animals had not come from any land that had been subject to deforestation since 2020. As if that wasn’t administratively clumsy enough, the seller was also going to have to produce an XY coordinates of the land on which the animal had been raised. This is just the latest blatant contradiction of the so-called simplification agenda”, said Mr. O’Connell.

But the ICMSA Livestock Chairperson said that this – bad and unworkable as it was – was less irritating than the official laziness that underlay it.

“What really irritates and annoys farmers is the reality that all this information is already within the purview of the Commission. They already have this information; they already have all the data and coordinates of any individual farmers’ farm. But rather than look up their own records, they make the farmers go through yet another laborious submission process where, for the umpteenth time, he or she will have to supply information and confirm details that they have already submitted annually for years. Why doesn’t the Commission look up its own records instead of asking us to submit all that information again? Why is their time so much more important than ours? They have all the resources, all the data and the latest IT systems, but seemingly just couldn’t be bothered. So, it’s just easier to ask every one of the thousands of farmers that will be selling an animal to ‘log on’ and go through the whole rigamarole yet again. It’s unacceptable and the attitude behind it has to end.  What kind of DDS will the Commission be insisting that the South American beef imported through any Mercosur Agreement has to meet?  Their whole sectors are based on deforestation, and the same Commission wants to import 100,000 tonnes of their beef per annum into the EU”, said Mr. O’Connell.

Mr. O’Connell said that ICMSA wants the current Deforestation Regulations to be taken off the table – not postponed for a year – and new rules that address deforestation properly put in place.

Ends       24 September 2025

Michael O’Connell, 086-8551015

Chairperson of ICMSA Livestock Committee

Or

Cathal MacCarthy, 087-6168758

ICMSA Press office