Any new agency set up to regulate the beef sector should have the power to set minimum and maximum beef prices, ICMSA president Pat McCormack has said.

He said a proposal from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission to set up a sector-specific body to regulate the beef sector “certainly has merit”, but only if it had the power to address the inadequate price being paid to farmers for their cattle.

As reported in the Irish Farmers Journal last week, the CCPC has called for an independent agri-food regulator.

Demands

“Farmer are seeing more and more demands being imposed on them and the reality is that farmers cannot be expected to meet the financial costs of these increasing demands without an improved return from the marketplace,” McCormack said.

“A sector-specific body would have to be given powers in relation to setting minimum and maximum prices - as seen in the energy sector, for example - otherwise it could simply turn into another useless quango or talking shop of the type that, we regret to say, the beef forum became,” he said.

Realistic returns

Top of the list of problems facing the beef sector is the “inability or unwillingness of the system to provide any kind of realistic returns to the farmers on whom the whole multibillion euro sector actually rests”, he insisted.

“The CCPC proposal deserves consideration, but it must have real power and a real determination to look at all the problems starting with who’s getting what out of the vast amounts swirling around the sector,” he said.

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