Just 160 herds finished almost one quarter of the national beef kill, or 413,500 cattle, last year.

Figures obtained by the Irish Farmers Journal show that the number of herds that slaughter over 1,000 head of cattle per year doubled between 2012 and 2022.

At the pinnacle of that exclusive club, there are 20 herds that slaughtered more than 5,000 cattle each last year. It is believed that many of these 20 herds are feedlots either closely aligned to or owned by the processors.

Restructuring

Meanwhile, the number of small herds slaughtering less than 25 animals per year has fallen by almost one third, with 13,000 small beef finishers abandoning the system since 2012.

The complete restructuring of the beef finishing industry has taken place since 2019, when the ramping up of large-scale feedlot finishing systems intensified.

This process was accelerated in the aftermath of the beef protests of 2019, when blockades at factory gates starved processors of cattle and ground their businesses to a halt.

The Irish Farmers Journal's exclusive analysis shows that factories now have a direct line to unfettered supplies of cattle from these large finishing units.

This provides factories with an insurance policy against the impact of any future farmer blockades and insulates them from the effect of seasonal cattle supplies and price volatility.