Beef battling in a recession

CONSUMERS are winning, but farmers and processors are losing, in a recession battle raging in the beef industry.

A survey in Britain has laid bare one of the major causes of low cattle prices in Ireland, and raised serious questions about how beef is marketed.

Basically, British shoppers have responded to hard times by buying two thirds of their beef in the form of mince and stew, according to a survey by Kantar Wordpanel, a leading international provider of consumer panel market research.