The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers' Association (ICMSA) has slammed the "punishing losses" being inflicted on beef finishers due to current factory prices.

Chair of the ICMSA’s Livestock Committee, Michael O’Connell said that cattle finishers are currently receiving €1/kg less compared to when the majority of these cattle were bought.

“Base prices of €6.60 or €6.70/kg are not sustainable when these cattle were bought at base prices were €7.70 and €7.80/kg.

"We can compare like-with-like in other member states and the UK, but these are irrelevant as they are not buying our cattle.

"Irish processors need to be held accountable," he said.

ICMSA

O'Connell called on meat processors "to show some respect for the farmer finishers and breakdown where they think the market is heading".

"They can start by explaining why the weekly kill has dropped to in and around 30,000 per week, and don’t insult our intelligence by citing ‘supply instability’; they wouldn’t kill them when they had them, so it’s definitely not that," he said.

The ICMSA Livestock chair said this is the fourth successive week when processors have moved to ‘pull’ prices.

O'Connell claimed that some farmers have been told they may have to wait up to three weeks to get their cattle slaughtered.

“When cattle are fit, they need to be killed. Cattle are in sheds since the middle of October when the weather turned and with intensive feeding regimes, they are getting stale and need to be processed.

"The feed conversion efficiency ratio reduces, the thrive is gone out of the cattle and we are in the most expensive time of year to feed," he said.

"Farmers are not charities; they cannot work for nothing and be left for up to a month trying to get cattle killed.

"Waiting three to four weeks to get cattle killed when they are dropping 10c per kg per week is putting further losses of up to €150/€160 per head excluding feeding on top of the losses of up to €400 per head in the drop in beef price from buying to selling," O'Connell added.

Beef imports

The ICMSA Beef chair also called on Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Martin Heydon to investigate why 41,000t of beef were imported into Ireland last year.

The farm organisation has previously called for a register of all businesses importing beef into the country.

"This is the equivalent to 118,000 steers based on the average carcass weight of 347kg for 2025 or – put another way - an extra 2,270 cattle per week killed," O'Connell said.

He said that the importers of this beef need to be transparent regarding the origin, processing location and labelling of this imported beef.

The ICMSA beef chair also called on the Agri-Food Regulator to investigate these concerns in the supply chain as well as collapse of beef prices over the last few months.

“There is Irish beef sitting on the same shelves in the UK as Australian and Brazilian beef.

"Brexit is now starting to become more of an issue as we compete with an inferior product from other countries, particularly South America," he said.