The country’s meat factories will be on the receiving end of a 24-hour protest by farmers next Monday and Tuesday as the sluggish domestic beef trade continues.

The Irish beef price is currently some €1/kg or €350 behind the Northern Ireland equivalent and IFA president Eddie Downey said farmers’ anger has reached “boiling point”.

“Farmers have had enough and are not prepared to tolerate loss-making prices any longer, especially when markets are returning much higher prices,” Downey said.

The protest comes on the back of two of the highest weekly kills in recent times.

Last week, factories killed 35,736 head of cattle and the week before the figure was 35,037. You have to go back to the end of July for the last time the national kill dropped below 30,000.

The protest will take place from 3pm on bank holiday Monday to 3pm on Tuesday. The IFA has indicated that should action not be taken, then it will block factory gates again.

It is expected that no cattle or sheep will be killed at any processing facility in the 24-hour period.

Meanwhile, the third beef roundtable takes place next Wednesday in the Department of Agriculture with the meat industry’s response to the Dowling report likely to be top of the agenda.