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John McCarthy, MIE.
Farmers pushing for change in the red meat sector claim industry leaders are shutting them out of industry events and funding.
MIE chairman John McCarthy says the organisation has been dubbed “too political” to qualify for funding from Agmardt, a state-owned entity funding innovation in the agriculture sector.
“For the members of MIE and for that considerable horsepower on the bench it has been unpaid: we are all volunteers,” he told the NZ Primary Industry Summit in Wellington last week.
“Worse still no one seems to want to pay us: for example we were turned down by Agmardt on the grounds we were too political, a sentiment echoed to me by the Beef + Lamb chairman. It beggars belief really; what is political about trying to revitalise the second biggest export earner? How can that be a bad thing?”
MIE claims it has also been excluded from the farmer funded Red Meat Sector Conference.
McCarthy described this as not only “a slap in the face for the MIE group, but more significantly a slap for our levy payers”.
“It is fair to say that in terms of the public face of reform MIE has been at the forefront for the last two years, and to be shut out by our own representative body smacks of something less than reassuring.”
But BLNZ chairman James Parsons says this isn’t true. “MIE has never been excluded from the Red Meat Sector Conference; in fact they are encouraged to attend as are all farmers and industry participants,” he told Rural News.
According to Parsons, in April McCarthy requested a speaking opportunity for MIE; this was “seriously considered”. “Unfortunately at the time all the conference speakers had already been confirmed and I explained this to John McCarthy,” says Parsons.
“The notion that BLNZ is trying to insult MIE or farmers is completely false, we have always operated respectfully and fairly with MIE in all our dealings.”
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