Farmer feedback to industry representatives at the organic lamb finishing event in Kenmare Mart on Tuesday evening heard that the overall infrastructure needs improving.

Currently, farmers in parts of Kerry and west Cork are travelling an hour and a half or two hours to drop organic lambs to a central collection point and this was hard to justify especially for smaller numbers of lambs.

Some farmers commented that to justify the journey, they needed a bigger load of lambs and this was resulting in lambs falling out of factory specifications for the organic bonus by being either too heavy, too light or under fleshed.

James Smyth of Irish Country Meats said that this issue would be looked at.

Preventing the leakage of certified organic lamb into conventional lamb markets was one of the key aims of these events along with securing even organic lamb supply throughout the year in order to satisfy customer demand. This was crucial to retain these markets. The sector needs to be in a position to say it has the confidence to have 52 weeks supply of organic lamb. “Failure to supply 52 weeks is not an option,” he said.