This is a subscriber-only article
The increasing volume of dairy calves from the expanding national herd is undermining the markets for prime, suckler-bred stock.
These were the sentiments of the some 400 farmers who attended a meeting of the recently established Beef Plan Movement in Westmeath on Wednesday night of last week. The group has developed an 80+ point plan aimed at creating producer groups across the country so farmers will have a stronger hand when negotiating with processors.
According to figures obtained by the Irish Farmers Journal, live exports for 2018 are running 56,448 ahead of 2017, with calf export accounting for most of that increase. Since quotas were removed in 2015, the Irish dairy herd has increased by approximately 30% in cow numbers.
National spokesperson for the Beef Plan Movement Eamon Corley said the industry has been operating in the hope that live exports of calves will continue. However, he fears that the increased volume of dairy-bred calves is undermining the prime beef market and a greater, more strategic plan for the dairy calves is required.
“Teagasc have pushed expansion of the dairy herd hard [but] there are a lot of extra dairy-bred calves and we have no solution to deal with that problem,” he said.
Corley said a central tenet of the Beef Plan Movement is to deal effectively with dairy-bred calves and “to remove as many of them from the system” as possible.
“We have a suckler animal, a prime animal, the envy of farmers across the world and it ends up in a box along with all other types of beef where it will go to one of three British supermarkets and sold on the bottom shelf as a branded product,” he said.
Corley and his group are advocating for the humane slaughter of Holstein bull calves at 14 days old in an abattoir for use in the catering and kebab markets.
They also want a veal industry established in Ireland where feed units would process the animals at six months and, finally, he wants an export subsidy introduced so more dairy calves could be exported with greater security for the exporter.
“We need to take more dairy calves out of the system, they only lose money for farmers,” Corley said.
SHARING OPTIONS: