Reported today on Irish Examiner For the full article visit:
Farm body claims consumers 'not paying enough for quality food'
The "cheap food" policy and the funding of anti-farmer publicity campaigns have been strongly criticised by the family farm organisation, ICMSA, which has also described division among farmers as "not a healthy situation".Speaking to 300 delegates at the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association annual meeting at Limerick today, ICMSA president, Pat McCormack, called for a truce in the anti-farmer bashing.He said: "Put simply, the consumer is not paying enough for quality food. They are underpaying for the highest quality food and they have been for decades.
As a farmer, we are receiving the same price we received 30 years ago which given the increase in input costs and regulation is just untenable.He warned that the cheap food policy is only cheap for the consumers because farmers are 'carrying' them.He said: "The cheap food policy was very expensive indeed for us. We get the same milk price today that our parents were getting 30-odd years ago. But every single bill we had has quadrupled at least."Mr McCormack said that the ICMSA is more than 98% funded by membership fees paid annually by farmer members and he called for all non-governmental organisations commenting on diet, food and farming to reveal their sources of income.
He asked: "Are some of these NGOs being funded by the corporations busily developing synthetic replacements for natural beef and milk? If they are then I think we need to know."He described the over-the-top nature of some of the programming during climate change week on RTÉ as "unbalanced".On climate control, he said that farmers have to play their part and they will meet the challenge but the bashing is not being helpful: "I firmly believe that farmers will respond but I hav
0 Comments