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Live cattle exports to the once lucrative Northern Ireland market have fallen to a new low.
Only 528 fit cattle have moved north for slaughter so far this year. That is a quarter of the 1,974 cattle that went north during the same period in 2017. It is only 12% of the number that went north in 2015 and 2016 for direct slaughter.
The number of cattle moving north at any age halved from 54,562 in 2013 to just 26,073 last year.
NI buyers were traditionally welcomed at marts across the west and midlands because they were a key driver of prices.
The loss of exports for direct slaughter accelerated in 2016.
Since then, cattle going from the Republic to Northern Ireland are classed as nomad cattle, and beef cannot be labelled as either Irish or British.
Sterling weakness is now further reducing the trade.
More than 27,000 cattle were exported for direct slaughter in 2014 but just 11,188 were exported in 2017 and numbers are set to fall again in 2018.
There have been similar drops in export of calves, weanlings and light stores from the Republic to NI.
NI plants and farmers have been partly compensated for this by increasing imports of slaughter weight cattle from Britain.
Imports for the year to date stand at 1,308, similar to the corresponding period in 2017 and well ahead of the norm of 300 to 400 head in previous years.
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