Horsemeat scandal leads to high cattle prices
In the UK, the National Beef Association is urging its beef finisher members to trade every animal they have ready to sell over the next two weeks, to take maximum advantage of a cattle price lift triggered by a beef buying spree at retail and processor level.
Meanwhile, prices for beef cattle in Ireland continue unchanged, or improved by up to 10 cent per kg, compared to mid-January, when it was first revealed that beef burgers were contaminated with horse meat.
Since then, widespread fraud and mislabelling of processed beef foods across Europe has been uncovered — but cattle prices have been resilient, and the horse meat scandal has not hit Irish cattle farmers.
This may be explained by retailers throughout the EU rushing to ensure beef is the only meat ingredient in their products, thus creating extra demand for cattle in Ireland, one of the EU’s leading beef exporters.
“Prices for prime beef cattle and cows have strengthened as UK and EU retailers hurry not just to replace processed beef products that have been implicated in the horsemeat scandal, but also do their best to re-establish, or maintain, their credentials as purveyors of top quality product,” said NBA national director Chris Mallon. “And this almost universal market move is being reinforced by processing companies which must replace, at their own cost, manufactured products that may have been tainted with horsemeat, and who are in the market for additional quantities of high provenance beef replacement too.
“As a result, prime cattle across the UK were on average dearer by around 3p a deadweight kilo last week, and cows were about 5-12p more expensive as well, because large volumes of manufacturing beef were exported to Continental customers who were also anxious to substitute horsemeat with beef.
“We expect this re-fill period to last until the first full week in March, because tens of millions of retail packs thought to have been adulterated by horsemeat have been removed from retail shelves throughout the EU and everyone involved in their replacement is keen to make sure their contents are 100% correct.”
According to the NBA, prices paid by processors for R4L steers and heifers in England, Scotland and Wales have advanced 5p per kg in two weeks.
