Speaking at the recent Bord Bia meat market seminar, assistant secretary general at the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and the Marine Brendan Gleeson told delegates sheepmeat may gain access to the US quicker than initially anticipated.

At present, the US market has a ban on all European sheepmeat imports due to transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSE) restrictions. These restrictions refer to scrapie and other TSEs, which at present are compulsarily notifiable in the European Union with surveillance and monitoring systems in place.

Gaining access to the US requires lifting the TSE ban to allow negotiations to commence. Gleeson said the European Commission has agreed with the USDA that it is going to try to get the ban lifted and fasttrack negotiations.

He said that Ireland is one of the countries included for fasttracking and once this is achieved, negotiations can start to take place on potential trade agreements.

In short, it means Ireland will be able to progress with gaining approval to export to the US market, a process Gleeson said started with a letter of interest sent from Ireland to the USDA authorities by the timeline set of 1 December 2015.

This will not mean overnight results, but Gleeson said he was confident that it would shorten the initial target of 2017, with progress hopefully made on the removal of the TSE ban for Ireland in 2016.

While a positive step, it is only once this is achieved that meaningful discussions will start to take place, meaning it is unlikely any sheepmeat will be exported to the US inside the next 12 months.

The market is reported as having even more prospects for exports than beef, with keen demand reported for high-value grass-fed lamb.

Difficult year for UK sector

2015 was a very difficult year for the UK sheep sector, with Declan Fennell describing many parts of the industry being in survival mode. The difficulties stemmed from the strength of sterling relative to euro greatly reducing the competitiveness of UK exports in key European markets, demonstrated in exports falling 21% to 65,000t, which served to create greater opportunities for Irish lamb in competing markets.

The price pressure started in mid-March, with the value of euro falling rapidly. As shown in Figure 1, it pulled sheep prices below the five-year average for the remainder of the year and left prices lagging substantially below earlier levels, with the exception of a brief period in September and October.

Despite the difficult trade, UK production actually increased by 2% to 305,000t.

Declan says this occurred from a combination of a relatively stable positive lamb crop of 17.57m head, 1% lower on the previous year, maintaining a high level of throughput and higher carcase weights.

Throughput of lambs during the peak supply period was higher, with the yearly kill of lambs and hoggets running over 2% higher than 2014 levels at 13.1m head.

This also compensated for a 10% reduction in ewe and ram throughput, with about 200,000 fewer processed at slightly over 1.6m head.

The difficult market conditions have hit farmer confidence and cast doubts over previous forecasts of a continual increase in the UK breeding ewe flock.

Many industry forecasts are now predicting breeding ewe numbers to at best hold steady, with Declan predicting a 2% decline in the 2016 lamb crop, reducing to 17.2m. Declan also reports a modest carryover of hoggets.