Farmers say retailers ‘gave no indication’ requirement 30-month age limit on cattle is vital

Farmers say retailers’ contribution to yesterday’s meeting of the Beef Taskforce only raised further questions around the 30-month age limit on cattle.

Last night, ICSA president Edmond Phelan said the major retailers attending the Beef Taskforce “gave no coherent indication that the 30-month rule is as important a requirement in the Irish market as processors would have us believe”.

“While all the retailers agree that quality assurance was of paramount importance, retailers are not as rigid on the issue of 30-months as we had been led to believe,” said Mr Phelan. “There were also varying and diverging views on other in-spec requirements including the four movement rule and the 60-day residency requirement on the last farm.

“This tallies with the results of a poll commissioned by ICSA and conducted through Red C which found that just over 12% of respondents — or less than one in eight — indicated a preference for beef from animals of under-30 months of age, while country of origin and quality assurance was a consideration for 89% and over 90% of respondents respectively.”

Mr Phelan said retailers were told current prices paid to beef producers fall “way short of what is required”.

“It has been made crystal clear that beef farmers cannot continue to produce at below the cost of production,” he said.

“To this end, we are pleased the retailers have agreed to co-operate further with the price composition study.”

Aldi group buying director John Curtin said it “is fully committed to making a constructive contribution towards the work of the Beef Taskforce and the future of the Irish beef market … The retail sector only accounts for 6% of the beef produced in Ireland and does not determine the market price of Irish beef.”

Ahead of the talks, Agriculture Minister Michael Creed described some of the beef industry lobbying groups as “flying columns”.

“Holding one or two meetings at a central location nationally does not a national organisation constitute,” he told Newstalk’s Pat Kenny Show. “We have established farm bodies, we have relatively new established farm bodies, as well, but we also have these ‘flying columns’, so to speak.”

He said the agricultural lobby has been widely recognised over many years as an effective one.

“The real danger is with fracturing of that strength in terms of its lobbying capacity, the advent of the ‘pop up’ farmer organisation, which was the hallmark of 2019, a series of strikes by independent, previously unheard of organisations,” said Mr Creed.