As you will be aware while our co-ops Ireland have major offensive interests in most of the trade deals the EU is conducting around the world.

But he Canada and US deals are double edged as we have offensive and defensive interests as they are competing Agri blocks.

At present there is no released text of the agreement, to the figures below are confirmed headline figures and details leaked to ICOS BXL.

ICOS will be working to push open these trade doors further in the future. We are now an official stakeholder with this Commission across a range of bilateral trade negotiations.

Our next official meeting with negotiators is on Nov 12^th.

Overall ICOS welcomes the CETA agreement which will strengthen trading relationships between Europe and Canada and this may ultimately also facilitate bilateral trade expansion negotiations with America.

However we feel it will take time for any direct benefits to be seen for coops in Ireland.

Contrary to some misinformed opinion in the agri press and from some of the argi organisations- The initial dairy gains for market access are for cheeses with protected origins (e.g., parmesan etc) but are not for cheddar for example, which is a key Irish export.

This particular EU Canadian trade round does not give immediate access to the Canadian dairy market for many of our commodities e.g., skim milk powder, whole milk powder, cheddar, butter etc.

We will also be encouraging our member dairy co-operatives to examine opportunities up the ‘value chain’ – e.g., functional foods, nutritionals, infant formulas, specialist dairy ingredients, milk protein concentrates etc. We will endeavour to get more details on opportunities in these areas under this deal to our co-op members over the coming weeks.

Why the Canadian deal held so much of our attention was 3 fold:

1. The US Agri negotiators were saying that beef access secured here would form a baseline for their access demands in beef and pork. (They have spoken of at least a multiple of 7.)
2. We saw how the EU negotiators were willing to sacrifice Agriculture as a playing card, to make gains in other areas.
3. Canada has a closed dairy market, still under a quota system. They jealously guarded this and EU negotiators proved they were not going to sacrifice gains in industrial goods and services to open it.

Headline Figures that we are sure of:

EU to Canada:

Cheese 18 500t of which 1 700t is for industrial cheese & 16 800t of high quality GI protected cheeses i.e. our co-ops through the IDB and direct sales will only be able to compete for the relatively minor Industrial side, so little value I think in this round.

The extra cheese is estimated to be worth around €150 million especially for the high quality, but that is to my understanding the protected cheeses in Italy and France primarily. (There might be a niche though for Dairygold to push the Imokilly range here though.)

We will have to see the full text to see what is done for ingredients, milk protein, whey etc to ascertain any potential opportunities.

From Canada to EU:

Main items coming in this way:

• 35,000t for fresh beef
• 15,000t for frozen beef
• 75,000t for pork
• 8,000t for sweet corn

These are all the figures for goods coming in to the union.

To put this in context Ireland alone exports 500,000t of beef, so this TQR (tariff quota rate) is equivalent to 10% of our national exports. Not great, but a lot better than the initial figures we were been given before launched our counter lobby campaigns. And I sincerely doubt will affect our co-op Mart sector.

Other issues:

• EU to make gains on processed agricultural products such as biscuits, cakes, chocolate, pasta  – total liberalisation from day one.
• Liberalisation of cereals in both directions.

List of 145 products with Geographic Indicator and none from Ireland, reflecting our dearth of development in the area. My understanding is that the EU cheese exports has to be on this list. (List supplied to any interested ICOS member on request.)

Q & A:

What is the TRQ for dairy?

TRQ of 16 800 tons of high quality cheese and 1 700 tons of industrial cheese for a total TRQ of 18 500 tons of cheese. (This comes in addition to an already existing quota of 13 400 t for high quality protected cheeses.)

Beef TRQ = 50 000t; how is this divided?       

15 000t for frozen and 35 000t for fresh – although this includes the existing 4 162t of fresh, granted under the WTO ruling, so we can say that this is only 30 838t additional fresh

What is tariff for beef TRQ?    

Zero

And for the others?     

Others Tariff Lines are liberalised (to zero), unless under  TRQ (pork and sweet corn, zero tariff under quotas);

Does it all come from day 1? Or several steps ?

Tariff zero from day one, volumes in several steps still to be decided

Does beef have to be hormone free?

Yes

Why are we making no distinction for different cuts?    

Distinction is there, frozen and fresh. According to nomenclature, not possible to make distinctions by cut.