"This has been one of the key outcomes of last November’s roundtable agreement and marks an historic breakthrough for Irish beef farmers who now for the first time will have a legal framework allowing for negotiation directly with factories on price as a group," said Minister for Agriculture, Simon Coveney, who chaired the seventh meeting of the Beef Roundtable on 16 December. "As we have seen from other sectors, Producer Organisations (POs) can greatly help to rebalance the supply chain by strengthening the hand of producers who will now have a structure for negotiating collectively. They also provide a vehicle for negotiating cheaper inputs as well as acting as knowledge transfer outlets for their members. In addition to legislating for their recognition which I will do before the end of the year I have also committed to funding a network of facilitators who will assist interested farmers in establishing these groups. I will be announcing further details on this early in 2016”.

Coveney believes that the seventh meeting of the Beef roundtable has delivered much greater transparency to the sector and have delivered on a number of key targets which even twelve months ago seemed difficult.

"Of course we do not have universal agreement on all issues and there will always be new issues to be faced but we have a forum which allows for open and honest discussion between all sides and allows for consideration of trade, climate and other strategic issues impacting on the beef sector in Ireland," said Coveney. "It is critically important to maintain this strategic focus, but of course this does not obviate the need for continuing, frequent and open engagement between processors suppliers on market issues”.

Adjusting AIM

A number of developments have ocurred in the beef industry since the conclusion of the November round table agreement. Coveney highlighted some of the actions he has taken since then.

"Today for example I confirmed that my Department is making an adjustment to its AIM system so that the number of farm residencies of each animal is even clearer when presented for slaughter," said Coveney. "There were discussions on certain aspects of customer specifications for beef on which there continues to be some disagreement and I urged the parties to remain in contact to try and resolve these market issues. I reminded the processors in particular of their obligation to provide timely notice of changes to market specifications."

Transparency

On the issue of transparency the Minister said that his Department had introduced significant upgrades to the Department’s Beef Pricewatch App which now allow for price comparisons between factories across five grades of each animal as well as bringing together each week the number and weights of animals slaughtered in each grid category.

"Improving price transparency has been one of the key goals of the Roundtable from the outset and the Beef Pricewatch App has transformed price transparency for sellers of cattle and since its launch earlier this year is averaging over 1,000 hits per week," said Coveney. "It has become the price comparison tool of choice for farmers here and marks our beef sector as the most transparent in the EU in terms of price information available. We are constantly reviewing it and the upgrades announced today will make it even more user friendly and add new layers of information to further improve transparency”.

Presentations

The Roundtable today also received presentations from Bord Bia on the market outlook for the sector and from Animal Health Ireland on its plans for initiatives in beef health. Teagasc also updated on the publication of its production blueprints for farmers since the last meeting of the Roundtable.

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