The Irish Cattle and Sheep Farmers' Association (ICSA) believes that a priority task for the new Agri-Food Regulator is to deliver transparency on the fifth quarter, ICSA president Dermot Kelleher said following a meeting with the new regulator Niamh Lenehan.

“This is the key to unlocking the unfairness in the food chain and to understanding why the beef and lamb food chains are not delivering a fair price to the primary producer,” he said.

“The Bord Bia tracker would suggest that, over the past year, the value of offal and hide has been worth in the range of 41c to 53c/kg carcase equivalent.

"The problem is that Bord Bia estimates are based on USDA [United States Department of Agriculture] data, which may or may not properly reflect the values in the European context.

Reflective

“Nevertheless, as Bord Bia acknowledges, the offal values are reflective of international markets. Moreover, the potential to add value to the fifth quarter is very much already in place in the Irish processing sector, with links to energy, cosmetics and pet food.”

The ICSA president said that: “Even if we accept that 50c/kg is the value, this suggests that offal alone is delivering €180/head to the average carcase of 360kg. Farmers do not get paid directly for this.”

“On the other hand, [the] ICSA is adamant that there is enough data to suggest that beef processing and retailing are both deriving margins from the beef.”

Budget

Kelleher said that the initial budget of €4m for the office would be a start but that a higher budget would be essential in the future to ensure that the office had the resources and skilled staff to deliver real results.

He added that there is a “need for the recruitment of suitably qualified and experienced people in the areas of forensic accounting, international trade and food economics and the retail trade”.

The ICSA expressed the hope that the country by country reporting rirective - European Union regulations 2023 (disclosure of income tax information by certain undertakings and branches) - would be helpful in supporting the work of the regulator in bringing transparency to the food chain in the case of products such as beef and lamb.

“These new regulations apply to entities with a turnover in excess of €750m, which have, up to now, been able to hide behind unlimited liability status,” the ICSA said.