Beef factories are operating their “September buying pattern” in what is traditionally peak period for farmers selling, according to the Irish Creamery Milk Suppliers Association (ICMSA)
As of May, 21 the Irish R3 steer price had dropped by three cent to €5.24/kg. For that same date in the United Kingdom (UK) prices increased by 12c to €5.72/kg.
The Irish R3 heifer has also seen a reduction of 4c to €5.27/kg.
The ICMSA livestock chair, Des Morrison, said that “for years if not decades” Irish farmers had to look on as “exactly similar animals were sold at inexplicably higher prices north of the border or in Britain”.
Beef prices
“This has been the great unanswered question and one which we are going to ask yet again: why do prices mysteriously fall in the 20 miles between Monaghan and Tyrone or few ferry hours between Ireland and Britain”, Morrison said.
Prices peaked in late March and held for four weeks at €5.30/kg on the grid for heifers and 5c/kg less for bullocks (steers), generally speaking.
Factory beef prices had remained relativity steady from February into May, but processor warnings of beef price reductions seem to be materialising over the past two weeks.
Recent statistics from the Central Statistics Office (CSO) show a 16.2% decrease in cattle slaughterings this month compared to this time last year.
“Irish prices traditionally rise in this period and need to do so right now.
“We are in this very suspicious ‘polar opposite’ trend that we know only too well, where an almost exactly similar market to whom we sell huge amounts of beef, with a like-for-like grid and classification system, has its prices going up, while ours are being cut,” Morrison said.