Factories and retailers have a ‘stranglehold’ on meat industry, TD warns

“We continue to have a system that benefits a few key players and gouges the pockets of ordinary farmers."

The Office for Fairness and Transparency in the Agri-Food Supply Chain is “not the regulator that producers require”, according to an opposition TD.

Social Democrats agriculture spokeswoman Holly Cairns told the Dáil recently that the prices farmers and producers receive are “ridiculously low and unworkable”.

“Meat factories and larger retailers have a stranglehold on the industry, which this and previous Governments have refused to acknowledge and tackle,” she said.

“We continue to have a system that benefits a few key players and gouges the pockets of ordinary farmers.

“We need a food regulator, an independent office with statutory powers to oversee and intervene in the sector. Instead, the programme for government proposed a food ombudsman, a lesser form of oversight, and now that has been watered down further with the creation of an office for fairness and transparency.

“This is not the regulator that producers require.”

Agriculture Minister Charlie McConalogue is expected to soon publish the bill that will see the establishment of the new office.

Mr McConalogue has assured that the new office that will be established will “bring greater transparency all along the agricultural and food supply chain”.

“It will engage with retailers, processors, wholesalers, farmers, fishers, and others on matters affecting fairness and transparency in the supply chain,” he previously said.

Unless there is a “major course correction”, small family farms in Ireland “will be a thing of the past in a generation”, Ms Cairns added.

“Many farmers that have been forced to go into dairy production just to get by are being subsumed by large-scale industrial farms,” she said.

“Sheep farming has become increasingly unviable. Wool prices are so low that it is more economical to dump it.

“That is at a time when we should be insulating buildings with this natural and locally sourced product."

Sinn Féin agriculture spokesman Matt Carthy told the Dáil that an enforcement authority is needed to monitor the processors and retailers “that have strangled the sector for far too long and hold them to account”.

Mr Carthy said that it is a meat regulator “we would like to see” rather than the office for transparency and fairness that Mr McConalogue has promised.

“I appeal to him to work with us to ensure that authority becomes a corporate enforcement authority that has full access to the accounts of processors and retailers in respect of the food they sell so that our farmers can finally have a level playing field,” he told the Dáil.

Mr Carthy has said it is “absolutely ludicrous” that the “best model of beef production in the world, that of the Irish suckler beef herd, continues to operate at a loss”.

Mr Carthy added that “there is money to made” in Irish beef.

“That is the big secret of Irish agriculture,” he said.

“The problem is that the people making that money are not the people who are doing the work, our primary producers.

“If we want the model of Irish farming to be one of premiumisation and for it to be sustainable and in line with our climate obligations, a premium price must be paid for that premium product.”

The industry is also awaiting a new stakeholder forum for the beef sector, after the beef market taskforce was wound up in 2021, with Mr McConalogue confirming that there is a “need for the continuation of stakeholder engagement”.

When asked about the new stakeholder group, the Department of Agriculture told the Irish Examiner that work is currently underway on the establishment of a new forum for the beef and sheep sectors, similar to the existing Food Vision Dairy Group.

A department spokesman said that the group is being established to advance the actions for the beef and sheep sectors identified in the Food Vision 2030 strategy, taking account of the requirement for the sectors to contribute to achieving the targets set for the agriculture and land-use sector in the Climate Action Plan 2021.