Compliance with Unfair Trading Practice (UTP) legislation has improved, according to an Agri-Food Regulator survey released this week. It finds that the number of respondents experiencing a UTP has fallen from one in seven in last year’s survey to one in nine.

There were 485 business responses to the survey relating to 1,313 trading relationships, an increase on the 306 suppliers relating to 948 trading relationships that participated in 2025.

There are 10 unconditional UTPs established by EU legislation and a further six conditional UTPs that can be set aside provided there is agreement to do so between the supplier and buyer.

Non-compliances

The most common non-compliance with UTP legislation was with the cancellation of orders for perishable products with less than 30 days’ notice. This was experienced by 4% of respondents while failure to comply with payment within 30 days for perishable products was experienced by 3%.

A further 3% responded that they had experienced failure to comply with payment within 60 days as required for nonperishable products, 3% reported having to pay for the loss or deterioration of their product and 3% reported unilateral contract changes being made by the buyer. All of these are specifically forbidden by the legislation.

Overall high level of satisfaction

These non-compliances were the exception with the survey finding a high level of satisfaction overall from businesses in their interaction with buyers.

While the sample size is small in some cases relating to individual retailers, the level of satisfaction ranged between 72% and 80% with an improvement reported by suppliers of seven out of the eight retail buyers.

The biggest issues found in the survey between suppliers and buyers related to issues not covered by the legislation. The big issue for suppliers, reported by 24% of respondents, was pressure caused by pricing strategies and cost management with 15% reporting pricing pressures/challenges in retail with margin pressure squeezing supplier profitability.

Last resort

Even though the UTP legislation is now well established, there remains a reluctance by suppliers to use it and engage the Agri-Food Regulator. The survey finds that this is viewed as the option of last resort with a strong preference by suppliers to try and resolve issues directly on a one-to-one basis.

The relatively small number of buyers have a structural imbalance in their favour in dealing with a larger number of smaller suppliers.

This means that even with costs rising for suppliers, buyer prices are held steady or even pushed down as they control “if, when and how prices change”.

Supplier participation reflects on Regulator

Niamh Lenehan, Agri-Food Regulator CEO spoke to the Irish Farmers Journal after the release of the latest supplier survey.

The office of the Agri-Food Regulator revealed the results of its supplier survey this week and it is generally positive with improvements on compliance and participation recorded. Niamh Lenehan is the Agri-Food Regulator CEO and she told the Irish Farmers Journal that she is generally satisfied particularly with the increase in the number of suppliers that participated in the survey.

This has increased from 306 last year to 485 this year but she wants to grow this further saying “it’s a very significant increase for us this year and hopefully that is a reflection of the regulator. We have talked to businesses about the means or how or what was the learning, how can we improve this next year or how can we circulate it better or should we send reminders”.

Farmer survey

The Agri-Food Regulator also undertakes a farmer survey the second of which was conducted during September last year. Despite the best efforts to promote it, there were just 241 responses.

Niamh said that “I’m interested in trying to develop it further, but it is challenging getting people to complete it. Last year, we launched it before the ploughing and gave people the opportunity to complete it at the stand but we still struggled to get people to do it.” She also pointed to a perception among some farmers that “UTPs don’t necessarily impact them directly,” though the upcoming formal review of UTP legislation might make it more farmer relevant.

Asba Meats

One area where farmers have become familiar with the Agri-Food Regulator’s work this year was the successful case brought against Asba Meats in relation to 79 offences of breaches of the legislation for the non-payment for cattle and sheep delivered to the slaughter plant by 12 farmers for 79 different amounts, the total of which came to €554,005.97.

Niamh was satisfied with the outcome saying that “although the cases were proven, we are obviously interested in getting farmers paid”.

The Agri-Food Regulator is now working with the Court and she said they have “been directed to provide a report on compliance or otherwise” but in relation to the scheduling of payments, “that’s now in the hands of the judge”.

Sheep information

Since the establishment of the office, various reports have been added on the market performance of the different sectors of the industry but transparency is greatly lacking in relation to information on sheep.

When asked about it, she said that “we have talked to people in the sheep sector and we’re aware of at least some of their issues or matters that they’d like addressed” and she also recognised that “there are some gaps in terms of transparency in that sector.”

Comment

The office of the Agri-Food Regulator has been in place since the end of 2023 and since then they have made an impact. The people who were struggling to get paid by Asba Meats will value their work in pursuing the payment and they are the first organisation to have published an insight into the values that factories receive from beef sales.

Having demonstrated that they can make a difference has the knock-on effect of creating an appetite for more. Their work in bringing transparency to what happens to values secured beyond the farm gate is just a start and there needs to be ambition to expand this role considerably. It is also clear that there is a better understanding and engagement from businesses selling to larger buyers than there is with farmers.

This is a bigger challenge in that UTP legislation is more focused on what happens after the farm gate but if they can further increase transparency in the supply chain, their relevance for farmers will increase.