A report set to be published by Meat Industry Ireland (MII) this morning (Thursday, February 9) will outline that Irish beef factories have “committed to delivering individual sustainability programmes to incentivise their [beef] suppliers” to reduce emissions.

In the report, seen by Agriland, MII chairman Philip Carroll states: “MII members are committed to delivering individual sustainability programmes to incentivise their suppliers.”

The report states that the direction of these programmes will be guided by the Beef Sustainability Charter. It is understood this charter will be published separately.

MII is the Irish Business and Employers Confederation (Ibec) sector organisation which represents the country’s main primary beef processing companies.

In the report, MII members will also commit to expanding the role of their agriculture teams “to incorporate the hands-on sharing of best practice information to suppliers with a particular focus on suckler farms”.

MII chairman Philip Carroll refers to suckler farmers in the report as “the lynchpin of Ireland’s beef sector” and states that the sector produces “the highest-quality beef for the international marketplace”.

Carroll also acknowledges that “over the next decade and beyond, even higher standards of agri-food sustainability will be demanded in the marketplace”.

According to the report, the key to “delivering the rate of progress required between now and 2030” will be “addressing data gaps in tracking their [suckler farmers’] sustainability performance, particularly in terms of calving intervals and age at first calving”.

“These issues were discussed extensively as part of the Food Vision Beef and Sheep group,” the report adds.

It details that the key to achieving the sustainability goals for the beef sector will require “genotyping of the national herd”.

Beef factories have also committed to working with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM), the dairy industry, and other relevant stakeholders to deliver a national genotyping programme.

According to the MII chairman the organisation is “confident of substantial progress in the short term”.

MII said the organisation has been “to the forefront in its collaboration with stakeholders to further strengthen integration between beef and dairy”.

It notes that “a number of beef processors already have “partnership programmes in place with the dairy sector”.

Many beef farms ‘close’ to carbon neutral

The report will emphasise that further investment is required “to measure the level of carbon sequestration on cattle farms and provide a more in-depth picture of the net emissions from each enterprise”.

The MII chairman also refers to Teagasc research in the report which suggests that sequestration rates of up to 2t CO2e/ha “are evident on Irish cattle farms, which is significantly higher than the 0.5 tonnes used in the national inventory”.

“This would suggest that many farms are close to being carbon neutral, but the absence of data prevents this from being verified at scale,” the report outlines.

Stay tuned to Agriland for further updates on this report.