Beef processors fume over protests
Cormac Healy, director of Meat Industry Ireland, said the beef industry had significant engagement with IFA in recent weeks in one-to-one company meetings throughout the country and at national level in an MII meeting with IFA leadership, where the industry agreed to work to clear the backlog of out-of-spec young bulls and explained some of difficulties in the European beef market at present.
Mr Healy said it was disappointing to see IFA reverting to disruptive tactics, which “will do nothing to improve the returns from the marketplace or tackle the real outside threats to the beef sector”.
But IFA National Livestock chairman Henry Burns said is very difficult for Irish farmers to understand why beef prices are under pressure, when steers and heifers in the UK were making the equivalent fo €4.50 to €4.80/kg including VAT. He demanded that processors stop imposing price cuts, and stabilise the market situation.
“Winter finishers have been hit with severe losses and they need to get cattle killed, and especially bulls, before any specification cuts are imposed.”
He singled out the bull crisis faced by some finishers as having major implications for the Food Harvest 2020 targets to expand beef output 40%.
“The price cuts on bulls have seriously eroded the beef market, with factories undercutting each other on our export markets,” said Mr Burns.
“Confidence at farm level has been eroded and needs to be restored. The suckler cow herd is under major threat and much tighter specifications on bulls in respect of age, weight and price will threaten numbers in the future. Winter finishing and year-round beef production to service the higher priced retail contracts is also under pressure.”
