Giving bull beef a bad name

In December, IFA warned members, out of the blue, that beef processors who encouraged farmers to keep bull calves from the dairy herd two years previously, were now turning their back on them, and not even offering to bid on dairy beef bulls.

This week, IFA said bull beef finishers were at their wit’s end, unable to get cattle killed, and facing substantial financial losses.

The slump is giving bull beef a bad name, and is likely to reverse the five-fold increase in recent years of the proportion of male cattle being slaughtered as bulls.