DEAR SIR: It is with utmost shock, disbelief and utter dismay that I read an article by one of your journalists in last week’s Irish Farmers Journal, reporting a proposal by the IFA that marts would trial a new system of sales facilitating the sale of finished cattle not necessarily through the ring.

The mart industry has served the farmers of this country with great diligence, transparency and integrity. We read with disbelief that the IFA now thinks that the mart industry has become outdated and needs to rethink its approach to the sale of livestock and become an assembly centre.

This would disregard farmers’ wishes to keep competition for their animals, through the auction ring as the final mechanism, alive.

Livestock marts have, for the past 60 years or more, provided a competitive marketplace for all classes of livestock to be sold in a public auction where market price is achieved by the fall of the hammer after the art of bidding is performed by perspective buyers, be they factory agents, fellow farmers, exporters or feedlot owners.

It has been proven many times that prices achieved in the mart ring are often not achievable in the factory and it is paramount that we always remember that a farmer standing in the seller’s box has the right to refuse or take the price offered at the fall of the hammer. In turn, he or she is the price maker, not the price taker as we see in other parts of our industry.

We as mart managers will ensure to keep our mart gates open by complying with many regulations, not least to mention the PSRA and Department of Agriculture ruling, while endeavouring to support the farmers to ensure best price and to instil competition into the livestock trade.

Marts are very much aware of the need to keep up with technology and are adapting their businesses to make the art of selling as amenable to the farmer as possible.

As secretary of the Associated Livestock Marts, I think this is a very dark day that we see the IFA, which represents farmers, calling for livestock marts to re-adapt the manner in which we sell stock, to remove the art of selling in earnest, to take away the fall of the hammer approach and become assembly centres where factories dictate the price instead of us ensuring that they bid against each other to buy the animal in the ring.

We as a mart industry will not become price takers and, as an organisation, always ready to engage with other stakeholders in our industry.