Aussie red meat producers label EU trade deal 'kick in the guts'

Australian agricultural leaders haven't minced their words in expressing their condemnation of the country's new EU Free Trade Agreement, announced on Tuesday.

The press releases arrived thick and fast, headlined: "worst ever free trade agreement for Australian red meat", "hung out to dry", "perfect storm", "sold out" and "kick in the guts" to name a few.

Under the terms of the deal, which was inked by Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, Australia will gain access for 30,600 tonnes of beef over the next 10 years. Industry stakeholders had previously indicated a preference for a larger allocation, with figures of at least 50,000 tonnes suggested as a benchmark based on access granted to other EU trading partners.

For sheepmeat and goatmeat, the agreement provides for 25,000 tonnes over a seven-year period. By comparison, New Zealand currently has access to 163,769 tonnes of sheepmeat into the EU market under its existing arrangements.

Chair of the Australia–EU Red Meat Market Access Taskforce, Andrew McDonald, said Australia’s red meat sector has been profoundly let down by this outcome and went as far to say: "The agreement is a long way from anything resembling ‘free and fair trade’, particularly given Australia already provides the EU with quota‑and tariff‑free access for meat products like pork, while the A‑EU FTA locks in perpetual volume constraints on Australian red meat entering the EU. The Australian red meat industry has been crystal clear that the FTA negotiations were the ideal mechanism to finally address the EU’s punitive and highly discriminatory import regime. To land a deal so far below what other suppliers have secured is genuinely bewildering."

NFF President Hamish McIntyre said the red meat industry would now pay the price for a subpar EU deal for decades to come. "Market access is the lifeblood of Australian farmers who do not rely on Government subsidies," Mr McIntyre said. "We are concerned the EU has offered subpar access for Australian producers while potentially needing to deploy billion-dollar subsidies to get their producers to accept the deal. This is exactly what happened when the EU signed a deal with the Mercosur nations, fast-tracking nearly $80 billion in farm subsidies, sending a clear signal protectionism is alive and well."

He said the government now needed to demonstrate how it would rebuild trust with the agriculture industry, suggesting a good first step would be to pause the plan to increase export costs on industry through full cost recovery until global conditions stabilise.

Australian Meat Industry Council Chief Executive Officer Tim Ryan also called on the government to immediately review the revised cost recovery arrangements for exports, while lambasting the free trade deal as a "kick in the guts".  

 Sheep Producers Australia Chief Executive Officer Bonnie Skinner described the deal as one of the weakest trade outcomes for Australian sheepmeat in recent history and that it raises serious questions about how agriculture has been weighted in the broader trade-offs made during negotiations. “Australia’s sheep producers have been sold out," Ms Skinner said.

Victorian Farmers Federation President Brett Hosking said it was clear the EU had run rings around the Australian negotiating team, with no improvement secured on the deal Australia rejected three years ago. “It’s pretty embarrassing. For farmers, no deal would have been better than what we’ve been dealt," Mr Hosking said. "At a time when farmers are getting smashed by devastating water buybacks and skyrocketing fuel and fertiliser costs, we’ve been hung out to dry for the sake of getting the deal done. We’re a $100 billion industry that directly employs hundreds of thousands of people. To be offered up as a bargaining chip is bitterly disappointing."

AgForce General President Shane McCarthy said: “This is shaping up as a perfect storm for producers. A disappointing EU deal, ongoing fuel and fertiliser supply pressures and increasing regulatory burden through measures like the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act reforms are all hitting the sector at once,” Mr McCarthy said. “At the end of the day, every Australian relies on farmers. We need policy settings that back producers in - not make the job harder.”

The deterioration in market access for Australian red meat over the past 18 months includes the loss of about a billion dollars in beef trade to China under its global safeguard measure; critical trade to Indonesia heavily restricted for beef and effectively banned for sheep meat under punitive Indonesian import licensing arrangements; emerging barriers to trade arising for our vital trade to the US and India, and significant shipping, logistics and supply chain disruptions associated with the war in the Middle East.