There is a growing awareness about the benefits of grass-fed beef among consumers in the Chinese market, according to Bord Bia’s beef sector manager Mark Zieg.
Speaking to Agriland at the Bord Bia trade mission to China recently, the Bord Bia manager explained that China is a 2.7 million tonnes per year beef import market.
He explained that Chinese consumers “used to see grass-fed as something that is backyard production but actually there’s an understanding now that grass-fed leads to good nutrition”.
“We already see that trend in the dairy side and we see an opportunity with a lot of the customers to work on that and really position ourselves not as a commodity import here but get the value for what we do,” he added.
“It’s a way of premium-ising it [Irish beef]. People look at our prices on the global stage and say ‘you’re very expensive’ . There’s lots of big players they can turn to, there’s no shortage of beef here.
“Bear in mind an Irish exporter is having to pick under-30-month cattle from Bovine Tuberculosis-free herds and a few other boxes to tick so you want to be getting a premium out of this market to make it worth your while to come here.”
Grass-fed beef cuts
Zieg explained that the Irish grass-fed beef cuts that will be in demand from Chinese beef importers are “cuts that would not command a huge premium in Europe a lot of the time”.
“There’s cuts here we can already get a premium out of this market for, but we would like to see a lot more and that would help a lot more of the Irish exporters to participate in the market.
“Some of the exporters that only have one plant approved would find it hard to build a supply of suitable cuts of beef and as we can expand that, you’ll be back to that situation where we were in early 2020 that they can build that and get more and more cattle that qualify into the containers for China.”
He continued: “Beef consumption is increasing and we carried out research on the market here and people are eating more beef and intending on eating more beef and excitingly for us, the customers are really interested in health and nutrition and the attitude on grass-fed has changed.”