We already knew from weekly kill figures that then number of cattle coming to slaughter had jumped ahead of last year’s since the end of the summer. This is evident in the latest figures released by the CSO for November (revised) and December, which are also ahead of the very busy last two months of 2014. Over the whole year, 1.744m cattle were killed, compared with 1.665m in 2015 and 1.749m in 2014.

The increase in beef supply is more pronounced when measured in terms of carcase weight. Ireland produced 588,400t of carcase beef last year, well ahead of 2015 (564,100t), but also of 2014 (581,900t).

The total sheep kill for 2016 shows a similar trend, with a 10% year-on-year increase in December bringing the annual total 2,895m head slaughtered – well ahead of both 2015 (2.833m) and 2014 (2.837m). Here again, carcase production is growing faster than the kill count. Ireland produced 61,000t of sheep carcases last year, increasing 4.5% on 2015 – twice as fast as the number of sheep killed.

Pig slaughterings, too, are on an upward trend, with a 2.8% increase in the number of animals killed in 2016 to 3.317m. Growth was slower in carcase weight terms, up 2.2% to 282,500t.

Beef trends: weekly kill settles at 32,199

Graph: CSO figures confirm surge in beef supply

Final figures for 2016 show that the cattle kill has nearly caught up with 2014 levels – and even surpassed it in terms of carcase weight.