The Agri-Food Regulator (An Rialálaí Agraibhia) confirmed today (Tuesday, December 10) that it has secured an agreement from the four largest beef processors to publish weekly pricing information.
The regulator will share weekly reported values for beef forequarter, beef hindquarter and 5% fat content beef minced meat (500g packs), as provided by the processors to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM).
The regulator met with representatives from ABP, Dawn Meats, Kepak and Liffey Meats in August and September 2024 with a view to securing the agreement, under EU market transparency regulations.
The Agri-Food Regulator will aggregate the values collected from each processor to produce a single average aggregate figure for each of the forequarter, hindquarter and minced beef values.
These aggregated values will provide an indicative price for the realisable value for beef at this stage of the supply chain and will be published weekly.
The regulator intends to publish the aggregate of all processor values on a weekly basis. The prices for November are as follows:
€/Kg Beef forequarter Beef hindquarter Minced beef (5% fat) 11/11/2024 €4.86 €7.00 €8.53 18/11/2024 €4.89 €7.00 €8.61 25/11/2024 €4.89 €7.13 €8.67
The regulator currently does not have access to the national beef kill weighting used by DAFM, but intends on providing a weighted value for each of the published prices. This would be in line with the values submitted by DAFM to the European Union.
CEO of the Agri-Food Regulator, Niamh Lenehan said: “The initiative to publish this information enhances transparency in the supply chain by providing an estimate of the value of beef accruing at the processing stage.”
“The reporting now by the regulator is an important further step in improving transparency in the beef sector. We will continue to work with primary producers and their end processors with a view to publishing similar reports in the future,” Lenehan said.