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The announcement by the IFA this week that the Minister for Agriculture has confirmed that monitoring of carcase trim by Department staff permanently based in the factories is a welcome if overdue development that will be welcomed by farmers. This is an issue that has been on the agenda of every beef industry round-table forum since they started in 2014.
Start date?
It is unclear from the IFA statement when exactly the technical officers who will carry out the carcase trim monitoring will take up their positions.
The quote from the Minister’s letter that is referenced by the IFA says: “The veterinary public health inspection staff in conjunction with the beef carcase classification section are currently putting in place a training and reporting system to facilitate the monitoring of carcase presentation…”
This sounds like the Department staff are in the process of being prepared to start this work rather than being ready to go.
However, the important point is that it will happen, hopefully sooner rather than later. When they are in place, it will be a reassurance to farmers taking cattle to the factory that they are dressed exactly as the specification says they should be with nothing extra captured by the factory before they cross the scale.
Farmer confidence
Farmers at times have a suspicion that they didn’t get full weights on their cattle and the Irish Farmers Journal has often received these complaints. Currently, trim is monitored by sporadic inspection by DAFM officials through unannounced visits and in 2017 there were 662 inspection visits carried out by Department staff, with 59,227 cattle checked.
While this is a significant sample and findings of the Department inspectors are that factories are mainly in compliance, the presence of permanent department staff in factories will mean that all of the 1.75m cattle killed annually will be exposed to scrutiny and farmers will have greater confidence that factories are trimming carcases exactly as the specification dictates it should be done.
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