The report of €200 penalties being handed out 21 times so far this year has generated huge debate among farmers. Just as it is important to highlight that these penalties have been applied, it is equally important to keep the issue in context and suggest how the issue of carcase trim scrutiny could be delivered in a way that would maximise farmer confidence that the system was delivering them full value for their livestock.

Context

It is worth looking at the numbers again. In the calendar year 2017, there were almost 1.8m cattle graded in Irish meat plants and department inspectors made 662 visits to factories across the country, checking 59,227 cattle in the process. While 21 major non-compliances have been found so far this year, there were actually none in 2017. There is no data available yet on the number of visits carried out in 2018 nor the number of cattle checked. However, assuming that it will be broadly similar to last year, then putting 21 cattle in the context of over 59,000 inspections means that less than half of 1% received the penalty.

The problem is that farmers don’t know what 21 cattle are being referred to and no doubt every farmer who has killed cattle this year, and has been disappointed with how they weighed, will be wondering was his among them. This is where full transparency would benefit both factories and farmers

The farmer whose animal was dressed so poorly that it merited a €200 penalty surely has a right to know what happened. We can be sure that Department inspectors will only take this course of action in the most extreme cases and in fact in both 2015 and 2017 there were no €200 penalties issued at all, with 28 given out in 2016. There are likely to have been several warnings issued along the way for more minor non-compliances.

In Northern Ireland, for example, there is no financial penalty but a system of warnings, both verbal and written, which is used sparingly. The ultimate sanction is an inspector stopping the line if he finds shoddy dressing of carcases during the visit. Another feature of the inspection process in the North is the publication of every factory’s performance on a bi-monthly basis. Unfortunately, the factory identity isn’t revealed, with each represented by a letter – A, B, C etc. What is interesting to note is that there is a variation between factories and the general rule of thumb is that a 90% satisfaction rate with dressing is typical. This means that one animal in 10 is dressed in a less than perfect way, ranging from minor to major non-compliance.

Better solution

In terms of delivering maximum transparency and building confidence in the process, it seems that a hybrid model using the best of both Northern Ireland and Republic of Ireland systems would be the way to go. In fact, if individual factory results were published with the factory identified on a regular basis, farmers would quickly see which factories were performing best. Factories too could watch each other and if a factory manager had a couple of bad reports in a row, you could be almost guaranteed that improvement would follow for the next time. There is nothing like peer pressure to drive performance.

It should also be recognised that after five years campaigning in the beef forum, additional monitoring of trim on an ongoing basis and in addition to the unannounced department inspection, will be rolled out in the new year. This will be carried out by DAFM veterinary public health staff AOs as they are commonly known and no doubt will enhance the scrutiny provided on carcase dressing.

Camera solution

Using modern technology, it should be possible to have every carcase recorded in sufficient detail that would enable a review by all parties after the event if there was any doubt in the standard of trim. The industry isn’t at that point yet though a trial on camera upgrade has been running for some time.

Much is said about the difficulty in developing technology that will operate satisfactorily in a meat factory environment. It is also a reality that Government meat hygiene inspectors can trim carcases as they move past their point on the line which would distort the final picture. However, a proper camera monitoring system would pick up issues such as hide puller damage and contribute to further enhance carcase trim monitoring.

Comment

Making sure the correct standard of carcase dressing is applied is a challenge. Enhanced technology plus additional supervision will all contribute to improve the standard. However, the ultimate control is robust inspection with the results published for non-compliances, and publication of these will drive improvement.