Since the formation of the Beef Plan Movement, the level of friction with the IFA has steadily grown, and the emergence of a real flashpoint was inevitable.

The surprise is it isn’t cattle prices, or Brexit, or CAP reform, but rather the number of permitted cattle movements under the Quality Payment System (QPS).

Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed’s description this week of the QPS agreement as a “purely private arrangement” between the IFA and Meat Industry Ireland, representing beef processors, is what has lit the flames of this row. He was replying to a parliamentary question from Michael Healy-Rae.

The Beef Plan Movement said the IFA had “been proven to collude with MII to introduce an anti-competitive practice”.

The IFA has rejected the minister’s account as “misleading”, so we have a three-ring circus.

The QPS

It is perhaps time for a quick history lesson. The QPS, which includes the beef grid, was introduced in 2009 to reward suckler farmers for producing superior quality carcases.

Alongside this, an in-spec bonus of 6c/kg was introduced for farmers in the Bord Bia Quality Assurance Scheme and produced animals that had fewer than four residencies, met certain grade criteria and were under 30 months old.

There is, of course, no restriction on the number of residencies an animal can have in its lifetime. It’s just that the animal is not entitled to the in-spec bonus.

The word on the street is that 85% of animals slaughtered comply with the residency restrictions and the 70-day rule. Perhaps we will see a parliamentary question asking for a detailed breakdown.

Within this, you would expect that the residency restriction is a much bigger issue for dairy-bred calves than for sucklers, with calves tending to move through dealers at an early age.

The broader question is, how many times farmers can afford to move animals?

Factoring in transport and mart fees, it costs from €30 to €50 per head each time an animal is moved – and that doesn’t include the few bob extra if it passes through the hands of a dealer.

So the calculation is simple – an animal that has moved four times has an added cost of €120 to €200 over a birth-to-beef system.

Can farmers really afford to keep moving them around?