Listen: Beef Plan in discussions with five factories

The Beef Plan is in discussion with five factories in the hope of striking a deal on contracts to kill cattle.

Eamon Corley, one of the movement’s founding members, told the Irish Farmers Journal at a meeting in Castleisland Mart on 4 February, that he had been directly contacted by some of the factories to start negotiations.

“I’ve got a contract price off one of the factories and there are four more factories in the process of getting me prices for contract killing cattle, so we’re going to have to see if the maths work and if this will work for us, but things are happening behind the scenes a lot faster than I would have anticipated when this plan started,” Corley said.

He said that most of the factories were independent but that he was not at liberty to disclose more details until the deal was complete.

“They’re different-sized factories. Some of them are small and some of them might kill up to 300 cattle a day so there are some quite big factories involved but we want to see if we can organise it and see if we can make it happen,” Corley said.

“We’re fairly confident that within a few months Beef Plan will be sending beef out of this country in containers.”

The movement says it is working on building links to the Asian market and providing payment for the fifth quarter to farmers.

Large turnout

The Beef Plan continues to attract a large crowd to its events, with the chair of the Kerry Beef Plan Dermot O’Brien telling the Irish Farmers Journal that 361 farmers had paid the €10 registration fee to join the group that night.

The overall aim of the movement is to create a producer group with 40,000 farmers

The movement has been growing momentum since its inception last year and now estimates that it has 17,000 participants in its nationwide WhatsApp groups.

The overall aim of the movement is to create a producer group with 40,000 farmers.

Bord Bia and a number of farm organisations were criticised heavily by speakers during the meeting.

There was a palpable sense of frustration from the mart ring as farmers took the microphone at the end of the evening to express their anger at current prices and thanked the Beef Plan for giving them hope for the future.

There was also a strong political presence, with TDs Michael Healy-Rae, Danny Healy-Rae and Sinn Féin’s Martin Ferris in attendance, along with a number of other election hopefuls.