Rationalisation is likely
On the marketing side, there is limited scope, in an industry where most of the big market decisions are made far away from Ireland.
That was clear to government, processors and farmers last week, all of whom must have been looking over their shoulders at a new threat to their sales in Russia.
Russia has become Europe's largest livestock export market. Now, Moscow's threat to introduce import tariffs on meat imports and limit them by quota is a stark illustration of the short life cycle of artificial markets which depend more on export refunds and politicians than on the quality of the product.
The market manipulators in Brussels allowed huge tonnages of Russian grain into the EU this year. After a predictable backlash from the grain industry in Europe, Brussels has come up with a new recipe, imposing import tariffs on much of the Russian grain.
Moscow has hit back with proposals to impose tariffs and quotas on the huge tonnages of meat it imports from around the world.
Once again, our beef industry's marketing departments must try to predict the vagaries of politicians and the World Trade Organisation; worlds away from food industries in the real world which develop the products which consumers want to eat, and set about producing them to the highest quality standards and distributing them in itself, a challenging enough project.
Beef processors too must get their research and development, quality and distribution right and then all their work can be undone by a diplomatic row over tariffs or veterinary standards.
There are also real world shocks like BSE or foot and mouth. But, if the Egyptians really liked Irish beef, would their markets still be closed a couple of years after the BSE scare. Their markets are closed primarily because EU export refunds are not large enough to deliver Irish cattle at knockdown world prices.
We have grown to depend on export refunds not on consumers or retailers impressed by our quality for half of our beef sales.
That leaves limited scope for some strategies aired this week, such as increasing exports to the Continent and targeting the upper end of the market.
Rationalisation, on the other hand, is a winning bet for the processing industry. Factories handling bigger throughputs are better able to withstand the inevitable shocks in Ireland's unreliable beef markets.
Rationalisation can also be a winner for farmers. Processors have told farmers they cannot take on additional costs for waste disposal and BSE testing, and will have to pass them back to farmers.
But if factory closures are Government aided in a national rationalisation programme, one of the conditions should be that processors continue to absorb any increases in processing costs.
In return, farmers will be only too happy to participate in cattle quality improvement programmes and mechanical grading, now that factories say they are happy to pay for quality.
