In a Seanad debate on Agenda 2000 on 9 November 2000, I said:

There is an increasing air of unreality in debates such as this in that they work on an assumption that is going out of date. The assumption is that the future of the world food industry will be decided by what governments do and in particular by international trade agreements such as those agreed in the WTO in Melbourne or Seattle.

If we believe that, we are not living in the modern world and if we persist in doing that, the cost to our food and agriculture sectors will be enormous.

About a year and a half ago I spoke at the World Meat Congress in the RDS in Dublin, which was organised by An Bord Bia. It was very well attended and I was happy to speak. I told that gathering, and I have repeated the theme at several international conferences because people in the meat business particularly do not seem to hear the message, that we have already seen a fundamental shift in what drives the world food industry, that is, the effect of it being customer driven.

Until recently, that industry worked within a framework of international trade agreements, which dictated everything. That is the way it used to work in the past. All the other factors, including customer demand, happened within that framework and by comparison with that overriding framework. None of the other factors were considered important and, probably, they were not. We have now seen a total change in these arrangements.

The framework that dominates the shape of the world food industry is not international agreements; it is consumer demand - what the customer wants. As before, the framework dominates the scene and determines what happens, and everything else is of minor importance compared to it. That is the reason it is assumed in debates like this that the dominant framework is one of international agreements but we appear to be dangerously close to running into difficulty and leaving aside the point we should be making. The food and agriculture sectors should concentrate their attention on satisfying customer demands, not on desperately trying to hold onto markets through means that time has passed by.

Let us examine what concerns customers most about the food that they buy and eat. Like it or not, what concerns them most is the issue of food safety. That issue will not go away. It will not disappear through wishful thinking. It is the issue that constitutes the biggest threat to the food and agriculture sectors in the years ahead, yet food safety is not at the top of the agenda in these sectors.

We had a terrifying warning of what could happen during the BSE crisis, which arose in March 1996, and as a result of that people's confidence was fatally undermined in institutions and in products they had trusted up to that date. It is only in the past few weeks, with the publication of the latest reports into the handling of the BSE crisis in Britain, the Krebs report and the Phillips report, that it has become clear how much that trust was misplaced and how right the people of Europe were to react as they did.

Despite the warnings of 1996, are there any signs that the lessons have been learned? The answer to that question is mixed.

On the one hand, we have had real action for the first time at European level and that culminated yesterday with the announcement by Commissioner David Byrne of the setting up of an EU wide food safety authority. I wish that new body all the luck it needs to succeed.

On the other hand, however, we are in the grip of a new crisis, this time in France where, according to reports, sales of meat have fallen off by 20% in the last fortnight. That was the figure available to me when I prepared these notes this morning but today's Financial Times referred to the Rungis market in Paris. It stated that more municipal authorities in France have banned red meat in school meals. It went on to state that yesterday the volume of beef sold in the main Paris market was down 41% on the average of the four Wednesdays in the previous month, and it gave other details such as that. That is a reminder of the way disaster can happen. That scare arose over the use of animal waste in cattle feed.

I do not know the French system of government too well but, under that system, President Chirac can be both Head of State and Leader of the Opposition. I am sure we would have an interesting situation if that were the case here. He has called for an outright ban on the use of such wastes in animal feed. Meanwhile the French Minister for Agriculture wrings his hand and says the country could never afford such a ban, as has been proposed.

It is not only in France that there are rumblings about BSE. An increasing number of human deaths are being reported in Britain and the number of BSE cases being reported in Ireland actually rising, not falling. We would be entitled to expect them to fall by now if the measures previously put in place were working.

If the agriculture sector across Europe had kept its eye on the right ball, it would have realised by now the overriding importance of dealing effectively with BSE. Senator Gibbons spoke earlier about the need for research, and I support him on that wholeheartedly. Scientific research is exactly what we need to overcome the issue of emotion. If we have scientific research there is some chance that it will be believed. Throughout Europe customers are not impressed by the way the problems are being handled. In France we are beginning to see the awesome strength of consumer power.

A while ago I took part in an interesting discussion during which the participants were asked to look forward 100 years and to choose an aspect of daily life that we take for granted now but which in 100 years' time will no longer be accepted. The historical example given was slavery, which is now universally abhorred, although it was taken for granted until comparatively recently. It is only 140 years since there was slavery in America and it was the norm up until quite recently in other parts of the world. Many suggestions were put. One was that in 100 years' time smoking would be a thing of the past. I did not have a difficulty believing that.

Another suggestion that I found impossible to believe was the idea that people might stop eating meat altogether, as they would consider it barbaric to kill living beings just for food. While I am not a vegetarian, I came away from that discussion thinking that the idea that people would stop eating meat was hopelessly out of touch with reality and that it would never happen. However, for completely different reasons on the basis of our experience over the past ten years, I can envisage that customers could lose confidence in the safety of meat to such an extent that they would give up eating it altogether.

It is a risk the agricultural sector must face, but is the sector taking that risk seriously? Judging by all the reports of the WTO and Agenda 2000, I do not think it is. It refuses to admit that the overriding framework that drives its industry has changed radically.

We must realise that we live in a different world. That framework is the preferences of customers and until the sector starts to acknowledge that and behave accordingly it will continue to charge off in precisely the wrong direction. I urge the Minister for Agriculture, Food and Rural Development to recognise this, otherwise we will continue to talk in the past and not realise the realities of the present.