Watch: 'I'm not a champion for Brazil' - Murrin to Oireachtas committee
Chair of Bord Bia, Larry Murrin has told the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture that he is "not a champion for Brazil".
He was responding to questions from Independent Ireland Deputy Michael Fitzmaurice regarding his company's sourcing of Brazilian beef.
Dawn Farm Foods confirmed that 1% of its beef supply in 2025 was from Brazil in order to comply with the requirements of supply chain contracts for customers.
Murrin has been at the centre of controversy over his role as Bord Bia chair while also having a company that sources some Brazilian beef.
Farm organisations say that farmer trust has been lost in Bord Bia as a result and that Murrin should resign.
However the chair has received the backing of the majority of Bord Bia as well as the government and business industry stakeholders.
Deputy Fitzmaurice asked Murrin how he can stand over the quality of Brazilian beef in the same manner that Irish beef can be quality assured.
"We employ in excess of 20 food safety and quality assurance experts in Naas," Murrin responded.
"We have stringent conditions that way exceed national norms in terms of traceability and the farm to fork aspect of it in so far as the raw material is concerned.
"I'm not a champion for Brazil and I want to make that perfectly clear today, but Brazil is the largest exporter of beef in the world today.
"Our global customers look at commodity markets globally and I have to be able to demonstrate, as part of our supply chain security arrangements, that this country can access those raw materials if it needs to," Murrin added.
He told the committee that it is a customer stipulation that Dawn Farms must be active in the supply chains that it has access to.
"And it must be practiced, there's no point in it being written down on a piece of paper.
"Our quality assurance teams work with the most reputable companies in Brazil when they need to and they have stringent requirements so far as quality assurance systems are concerned and very demanding timeframes."
Chair of the committee, Aindrias Moynihan told Larry Murrin that "Irish farmers expect you to be their champion".
In response, Murrin said: "I am a champion for Irish quality assured beef and Irish farm produce in general and I have been since the day we started our business."
Murrin as chair of Bord Bia
When questioned by Deputy Peter 'Chap' Cleere about his position as chair of Bord Bia and it being compatible with his role at Dawn Farms, Murrin said: "I'm completely reconciled that there is no conflict, incompatibility whatsoever.
"Nothing wrong has happened here, nothing under-handed, nothing illegal, nothing in any way dark about it.
"We cannot create 'Fortress Ireland' here. We rely on being able to satisfy the needs of our foreign global customers.
"A significant proportion of it [beef] comes from this very country; some of it comes from the UK and the rest comes from Europe, but a majority comes from Ireland, well over 50%, that's all I'm prepared to say."
Murrin said he understood the demands of the Bord Bia quality assurance audit on Irish farmers.
"Without quality assurance, we don't have markets abroad for the products we produce as a country, and quality assurance in everything is fundamental.
"My own business in Naas undergoes an average of 50 audits a year from our customer base across the world.
"Those audits will be about quality assurance, they'll be about food safety, they'll be about sedex [Sedex Members Ethical Trade Audit]; half of those audits are two to three days in duration and a significant percentage are unannounced.
"The message is that quality assurance applies to us all," Murrin said.
