The mood is good among Scottish beef farmers at the moment. Finishing beef in the highest-priced beef market in the EU, they remain quietly confident about the future of the industry. The Scottish beef brand is a huge success story, with worldwide recognition of the product. The strength of this brand has enabled Scottish beef farmers to achieve a consistently higher price than the rest of the UK. The breeding herd is running at 424,000 suckler cows and the average herd size is 47. Scotland has a number of very large cattle holdings and, in 2015, 13.5% of holdings accounted for over half the cattle population.