The Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) chief executive officer (CEO), Sean Coughlan, has said that if the changes to the beef breeding indexes were reversed, it would “create even more chaos”.
The ICBF CEO appeared before the Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture, Food and the Marine yesterday morning (Wednesday, December 13), alongside the Teagasc beef enterprise leader, Dr. Paul Crosson, and the ICBF chairman, Michael Doran.
The main focus of the meeting was on the recent re-classification of the Euro-Star beef breeding index.
Responding to a question from the committee on whether the index changes would be reversed, the ICBF CEO said:
“If we think that the level of confusion that’s out there now is bad, changing it mid-stream again, and having indexes and people not knowing where they’re going to stand – they’re going to try and predict what’s going to happen, it’s going to create even more chaos out there.”
Doran later in the meeting, said: “I do not see the [ICBF] board changing the decisions they have made”.
The ICBF CEO also said, while “there are genuine cases out there”, he believes “there is a lot of fear mongering out there as well”.
“I have talked to farmers who rang me personally with a serious problem, I looked at their herd and explained what’s going on,” he added.
“A lot of the farmers when they were ringing didn’t know what changes had happened. A lot of the farmers that are worried about the indices are not even in SCEP [Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme].”
ICBF CEO on SCEP concerns
He addressed concerns from pedigree breeders whose bulls have dropped in star ratings, saying: “Some of the pedigree breeders have bulls that have dropped on stars.
“What I would say is from a Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme point of view, it’s only taking 40% of the bulls.
“In terms of the eligibility for the SCEP scheme, the animal has to be 4- or 5-star within, or across breed. There are only 4.5% of the bulls that were 4- or 5-star within or across breed, that are now not 4- or 5-star within or across breed.”
Sean Coughlan also told the committee: “This is something that suckler-beef systems globally are struggling with in terms of where they are going.
“Input costs going up, cow-size continuing to get bigger globally, and with greenhouse gas impacts on it. What these indexes are doing is looking to stabilise that,” he said.
“The second thing, is that if we didn’t make these changes, and breeding is a long-term business, it’s going to take six or seven years before we see the full impact of these changes.”
The ICBF CEO told the hearing that “if a farmer acted in good faith, they should not be disadvantaged”. However, he also said: “The reality is that the terms and conditions of the SCEP are not the remit of the ICBF”.
He made a commitment to engage with the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) on the matter of SCEP participants not being negatively impacted by the index changes.