Italy’s largest retailer wants to buy more Irish beef and more live Irish cattle for finishing on its feedlots, starting next year.
This is because the co-operative group – Coop Italia, the buyer of KK Club beef – is switching to selling beef only from cattle that never received antibiotics.
It will be the first major EU retail chain to do so.
The move is a response to escalating worry about the spread of bacteria which are resistant to these medicines. At present, all beef sold by Coop Italia is finished without antibiotics, ie 125 days free, and is GM-free.
Coop Italia sources beef and cattle from a number of countries – but it believes Irish suckler farmers will be best positioned to provide whole-of-life antibiotic-free beef and cattle.
Coop has estimated that over 95% of cattle from Irish suckler herds never receive an antibiotic. That is the result of a mix of factors including small herd size, outdoor grazing, use of vaccines and good management.
Full week’s kill
Coop takes KK Club beef from 30,000 cattle per year. It also buys up to 5,000 live weanlings through livestock exporter Viastar.
That is the equivalent of a full week’s kill at all Irish factories.
It now wants suckler farmers and marts to start identifying weanlings which have never received antibiotics – as well as no GM feeds – and to offer them for sale as such. These weanlings can then be bought by KK Club finishers or for live export to Italy.
Coop and Kepak will shortly write out to the KK Club’s 75 finishers notifying them that from early next year cattle offered for slaughter through KK will have to be whole-of-life antibiotic-free.
If a KK Club finisher has to treat a sick animal with antibiotics, then that animal goes to other markets, observing normal withdrawal periods and there is no impact for the other antibiotic free cattle in the herd.
Likewise, if a suckler farmer treats a sick weanling with antibiotics, the other weanlings remain eligible for Coop.
Testing
Coop has outsourced the tasks of developing its Irish supply base and validation to its European certication company Edell Point Server. Equipment will be installed in its new Co Longford base to test for antibiotic residues across Coop’s entire supply chain.
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Editorial: Ireland can benefit from growing demand for antibiotic-free beef