High beef prices could be the new normal – ICMSA

The Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA) has questioned whether farmers have been underselling beef for years given the rocketing cattle prices of recent weeks.

ICMSA livestock committee chair Michael O'Connell said that factories are presenting today’s prices as “freak, as it were”.

“Whoever thought we would see the day of €8/kg for prime beef and it raises the question: have we been underselling our beef for years, leaving factories with a phenomenal margin per kg of product?

“Perhaps this is the new normal and what was freakish was the way those factories conditioned and managed our beef to return such a low price to the farmers,” O’Connell said.

He rejected outright what he called the “negative messaging” emanating from processors on the immediate outlook for beef price.

O’Connell said the warnings about difficult sales periods, changes in consumer tastes or needs and reduced kill plans indicating only four weeks slaughtering out of the next eight-week period could not be logically explained or justified and smacked of “sheer desperation”.

Mind games

He accused factories of playing mind games with farmers.

“For the first time in years, the farmers have the upper hand on the factories in terms of supply and prices and some of the factories just seem unable to handle it.”

The ICMSA livestock chair said that for years, farmers have been “conditioned” to prices ranging from €3.40/kg to €4.50/kg.

That had changed radically and the last number of months had seen prices soar on the back of huge market demand, upwards from €5 to €6 to €7 and now €8/kg, he said.

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