Ireland’s emergence as Britain’s primary supplier of imported beef has its roots in the Anglo-Irish Free Trade Area Agreement (AIFTA) of 1965-66, and the additional export supports that were subsequently put in place by the then-Minister for Agriculture, Charles Haughey.

While the AIFTA stipulated that Ireland had to export at least 638,000 store cattle to Britain each year, crucially the UK government agreed to extend its fatstock guarantee payments to 25,000t of Irish carcase beef and 5,500t of Irish lamb. This was a major concession by the British, as it gave Irish meat processors access for the first time to UK support payments.

In 1965 the UK fatstock guarantee payments were worth 1.5p/lb or an additional £4-5 per head on finished animals valued at £70-80.

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The impact of this concession was accentuated by Haughey’s decision in July 1966 to provide Irish exchequer supports – under a measure called the Carcass Beef Export Guarantee Scheme – on all prime beef exports to the UK not in receipt of British fatstock payments. The Irish payments were at the same rate as the British supports.

This move meant the Irish State effectively established an open-ended support mechanism for beef exports to Britain in excess of the 25,000t covered by the AIFTA.

The carcase beef supports were paid directly to the processors and provided a crucial financial subvention to the meat factories from 1966 until 1971 – when rising livestock prices eroded their value.

Export subsidies paid out under the AIFTA and Carcass Beef Export Guarantee Scheme were worth close on £1.5m to the beef industry in 1966, but this increased to £6m in 1967 as cattle prices fell and the support payments increased from 2p/lb to 6d/lb or £16 per head on each eligible animal.

A breakdown of the 1967 subsidy payments highlights the significance of Haughey’s intervention. While £1.4m of the £6m total was paid by Britain under its AIFTA commitments, beef processors received the remaining £4.6m from the Irish exchequer.

Haughey had effectively quadrupled the subsidies paid to processors on prime beef exports to Britain that year.

Throughput boom

Ireland’s beef processors immediately responded to the export supports.

Throughput at the country’s meat plants went through the roof. The number of animals slaughtered and shipped as beef rose from 312,000 head in 1965 to more than 750,000 head in 1967. Total beef exports almost trebled in two years, rising from 55,000t in 1965 to more than 150,000t by 1967.

This unprecedented level of expansion was primarily driven by a five-fold increase in carcase beef sales to Britain.

Beef exports to Britain averaged 22,000t between 1960 and 1965, but the introduction of the UK and Irish subsidies resulted in volumes soaring to 108,000t in 1967 and averaging 94,000t between 1967 and 1972. This development had a profound impact on the Irish livestock industry at a number of levels.

Charles Haughey (left) played a crucial role in putting policies in place in the 1960s which resulted in a massive expansion in carcase beef exports.

It resulted in the number of cattle slaughtered and exported as beef surpassing live exports for the first time. This altered the power balance within the livestock sector.

Cattle shipped on the hoof accounted for two-thirds of Irish bovine exports (meat and animals) in 1965, with beef sales making up the remaining one-third.

However, by 1967 these statistics were completely overturned, with 55% of cattle exported as beef, while 45% of animals were shipped live. The beef processors were now the top dogs in the cattle business; a position they never relinquished.

UK imports

Another consequence of the exchequer supports was that Ireland eclipsed Argentina as Britain’s main supplier of imported beef. Irish beef also took a significant proportion of Australia’s market share. Australian beef exports to Britain fell from 100,000t to 40,000t between 1965 and 1967.

A six-month ban on South American beef imports into Britain in 1968 – imposed after an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in England was blamed on a consignment of carcase beef from Argentina - provided a crucial opportunity for Irish companies to increase their UK sales.

And although Argentine beef exports recovered to around 100,000t, Ireland still supplied 42% of British beef imports in 1971 and had overtaken Argentina as the UK’s primary beef supplier.

However, the increased level of beef exports to Britain was not all good news. The Irish factories were accused of effectively hunting the lucrative exchequer supports by dumping beef onto the British market at bargain-basement prices.

Moreover, the marketing body CBF (Bord Bia’s precursor) maintained that established markets for Irish beef in Europe, North America and with the US armed forces were neglected by the factories due to the “easy money” on offer in Britain.

Britain remained Ireland’s main outlet for beef, with Ireland’s primacy in the market copper-fastened in 1973 when both countries joined the EEC, and Argentine and Australian beef was effectively locked out of the UK market by tariffs.

However, Brexit has unpicked that lock in and allowed the South Americans, the Aussies and the Kiwis back into the British beef market.

And, so, the battle to put beef on Britain’s plates has now resumed – after a 50-year hiatus.