Quality pays off in food industry performance
Food and drink exports exceeded €9 billion for the first time in 2012 — but they have already increased another 8% for the year to-date in 2013.
This increase was driven by a particularly strong performance in beef exports — despite the scandal over horsemeat contamination of processed beef products, which caused processed beef sales to slump as much as 43.2% in the UK, our main beef export market.
Sources in Bord Bia linked resilience in the market for Irish beef to strong demand for cattle from the Bord Bia Beef Quality Assurance Scheme (BQAS). They revealed that some 85% of Irish beef production is being sourced from BQAS-approved farms, up from 78% in 2012.
More and more farmers are applying for BQAS membership, with a 135% increase in applications this year so far. This reflects a doubling of the bonus paid by beef processors for cattle from approved farms, according to Bord Bia.
Their 2012 figures reveal the 12 cent per kilogram of carcase weight bonus, or €42 on an average 350kg carcase, provides substantial revenue for the country’s biggest cattle finishing farms.
The bonus is payable on prime cattle which have resided on Quality Assured farms for the final 70 days, in the eligible fat class and conformation grades.
On average, BQAS farms are selling about 40 animals each for slaughter per year — but the 2,500 biggest farms in the scheme account for half of the county’s QA cattle. The average of these farms sells 238 slaughter cattle per year, and if all of these qualify for the 12 cent per kilogram of carcase weight bonus, it is worth about €10,000 of annual revenue per farm.
As well as higher BQAS uptake among farms selling greater numbers of animals, there were quite a few members of the scheme who don’t sell any cattle directly for slaughter.
Quality Assured statistics also show the highest uptake is in counties with a large number of finishing farms.
These are led by Co Cork, with 160,623 BQAS cattle slaughtered in 2012, and Co Tipperary with 132,496. Next comes Co Meath with 72,426.
