Agriculture group says beef trade with China must resume at earliest opportunity
The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers Association (ICSA) says it is important Ireland's beef trade with China's resumed at the earliest opportunity.
Yesterday it was temporarily suspended after a 14-year-old cow was found to have 'atypical' BSE, or 'mad cow disease'.
A report is currently being carried out by the Department of Agriculture on the matter.
Beef exports to China were forecast to hit €120m this year.
Edmund Graham from the ICSA hopes it can still be reached despite this setback.
He says: "The big volumes of beef that was expected to go this year was great and we didn't get held back by an outbreak of the Covid and things were just slowly starting to get back to normal.
"Where we were starting to move beef again to China and this has happened so it has slowed the whole thing down again.
"So hopefully there won't be too much of a delay."
