“You can’t tell us when we need to kill an animal or when not to kill an animal. A beast is like a piece of fruit. When he’s ripe, he’s ripe....”

This was a quote from a disgruntled audience member at a recent finishing seminar. He claimed to have been in the business for 40 years and was giving out about the so called "unfairness" that shrouds the age-limit aspect of the Quality Assurance Scheme.

Obviously a finisher has no control over what walks into the ring on a given night but I remember rolling my eyes at hearing this statement. To someone involved in suckler beef-finishing research, the notion of keeping an animal into its third year is ludicrous.

ADVERTISEMENT

Now imagine the eye-rolling that occurred this week when news broke that there was to be a push to relax the 30-month age limit on quality assured animals. We’re drilled in efficiency, which means getting them out the door as soon as possible with as little inputs as possible.

Perhaps I’m being a tad harsh, horses for courses and all that. The funny thing is though that our friend from the seminar isn’t totally wrong. Research has shown that when slaughtered nearly 10 months apart, striploins taken from the same type of animals had little or no difference in terms of eating quality.

Retailers

For the most part, what is trying to be accomplished with specs is the control of cut size. Huge retailers with GDPs comparable to small countries demand cuts that fit perfectly into their display trays and pay lucrative money for them. Capping age and particularly weight is one way of ensuring a steady supply of suitably sized steaks.

Eighty percent plus of the carcases will probably be going to markets where weight and age are irrelevant, but these cuts don’t demand the big bucks and thus it isn’t in the processors’ interest to have an increased volume of these coming off the kill floor.

When challenged about age limits, retailers were interested to hear that age had no difference in terms of eating quality. However, when they questioned as to what sort of carcase weights were being hit with the older animals, they laughed at the notion of a 460kg+ carcase making it onto their shelves.

Finishing early

But what about the other end of the age spectrum? In reality, there has never been a problem with finishing cattle as young as 13 months of age. A good bull through good management can be fattened sufficiently and hit an acceptable carcase weight not long after its first birthday.

The challenge of course is profitability. Does an animal which was killed young leave anything behind? Usually an intensive finishing regime is necessary to achieve a finish, regimes which we all know are costly.

At home, we’ve focused on three things to make our suckler calf to young-bull-beef system work and work well at that; breeding, breeding and breeding. Using the top terminal sires to produce animals with high growth potential is what makes our system a profitable one. Our bulls never hit ad libitum concentrate during finishing, yet averaged 380kg at 15 months of age as a group this year.

At the moment Irish beef is facing a few harsh realities. Processors insist that the demand for Irish beef just isn’t out there at the minute, though they expect a season-driven price rise in the coming weeks.

Has horsemeat left a bitter taste throughout Europe? Is there being enough done to market our product internationally? They’re questions for another day.