Letter: technical review into accuracy of ICBF ratings needed

The members of the Pedigree Breeders Council have lost all faith that the beef industry stakeholders forum will deliver any meaningful change.

We are calling for a fully independent technical review into the accuracy and the impact of the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) star ratings on the national herd.

The stakeholders forum was proposed by the ICBF as the mechanism to review the impact of the changes introduced by the ICBF 12 months ago. The only correction to date is that cows that are extremely light (under 480kg) now receive no additional economic benefit in the replacement index.

The impact of the changes was so severe that the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, as an emergency measure, has had to loosen the rules of the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP) to alleviate dissatisfaction among farmers. Many herds that had high replacement animals pre-November 2023 saw their figures plummet dramatically after they had joined the SCEP scheme.

This concession stopped the scheme from collapsing, but did nothing to alleviate the impact on many pedigree breeders who can no longer breed animals suitable for the scheme.

Costs

The biggest change in the index last year was that the cost of keeping a cow increased by 30% and it now transpires that this cost is only an estimate.

It has recently emerged that farmer-recorded cow weights (90% of cow weights recorded) are not being used in the model by the ICBF. Only ICBF technician-recorded data (10% of cow weights) is included.

It has been noted that the average daughter liveweight of the top 10 bulls on the replacement active bull list sits at just over 550kg. That cow might suit bureaucrats in Brussels' notions of environmental ideology, but she certainly will not breed weanlings or factory cattle that will pull down the scales and put money in farmers' pockets in rural Ireland.

That’s a worrying prospect for the future of the Irish beef processing industry, considering carcase weights are in decline as we stand (Bord Bia data) and the new evaluations seem destined to further exacerbate that problem.

Major concern

Our major concern is that our breeders are facing into a second spring of uncertainty and the forum appears to be designed to wear us down. This is evident by the fact that Teagasc, as the scientific authority, only had one person in attendance at the most recent forum and only had two representatives present at the previous one.

In addition to this, the Teagasc representative at the latest forum agreed that the economic values used in the evaluations are no longer up to date.

The ICBF and Teagasc have acknowledged that communication to farmers in relation to the level of impact the November 2023 evaluation changes was going to have on their herds has been poor. Nothing has been done on an industry level to fill this information gap to the wider farming community.

It is incredible that over half a billion euros has been spent on these schemes without ever independently verifying their impact on the national herd or the environment.

Kind regards,

Seamus Nagle

Chair, Pedigree Breeders Council.