Ireland-Irish farmers have another go at Brazil.

IRELAND-PROTECTIONISM YET AGAIN, THIS TIME DISGUISED AS CONCERN FOR THE PLANET.

Irish farmers should be preparing to renew the fight against Brazilian beef on the grounds of carbon footprints, a leading bio-energy expert has warned.

New buying policies in Britain could see supermarkets demanding that farm produce such as beef and milk be labelled with their carbon footprint.

At least one major British chain has warned it expects to see a carbon footprint for red meat in Ireland within six months, John Gilliland told the Teagasc/ACC Bank bioenergy conference on Thursday.

A senior buyer for one supermarket told the managing director of a Dungannon meat plant that the supermarket had already done its own calculations on Northern Irish beef.

"And we think it’s worse than Brazilian beef," he warned.

A new British standard for carbon accounting in the food chain, PAS 2050 Standard, has already been given support by major retailers such as Cadbury, Co-op, Innocent, Muller, Pepsico, Sainsbury and Tesco.

A recent Tesco survey of 5,000 consumers found that 97pc of them would actively seek low-carbon products if they were available at the same cost as current items.

Some 35pc of the consumers surveyed would seek low-carbon products, even if they were more expensive.

Dr Gilliland warned that with 60pc of all Irish food exports destined for Britain, retailers would be insisting on the PAS 2050 standard for Irish food.

Walkers Crisps was one of the first companies to issue a carbon footprint label. This outlines that every 35g of crisps has 75g of carbon dioxide.

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