Publish the range of beef prices paid by factories, says ICMSA

The Department of Agriculture should publish the range of prices paid each week by individual meat factories for the different categories of cattle rather than the averages, the ICMSA has claimed.

“The usefulness of the [current Department of Agriculture] data from a farmer perspective is limited as we all know that averages hide the real story in many cases,” said Michael O’Connell, the ICMSA livestock committee chair.

“The ICMSA has long proposed to the Minister for Agriculture that the Department should publish the range of prices paid by each meat plant on a weekly basis and, indeed, we raised this matter directly with the EU Commission in Brussels in recent weeks,” he added.

“The reluctance of both the Minister and the EU Commission to move in this direction raises questions in relation to transparency,” O’Connell maintained.

“They have the range, they need it to produce the average so why the reluctance to publish it.

“Both the Minister [for Agriculture] and the EU Commission need to answer this question,” O’Connell said.