A meeting will take place in Athlone, Co. Westmeath, next week, to discuss the possibility of seeking a court injunction to prevent the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) from using the revised beef indices it introduced last last year.
The meeting is organised by the Irish Beef and Lamb Association (IBLA), which announced before Christmas that it would hold a meeting to consider the possibility of seeking an injunction.
The meeting will take place at 8:00p.m next Wednesday (January 17) at The Bounty Bar at the local rugby club in Athlone.
The changes to the terminal and replacement beef indices have been introduced by the ICBF, and have proven to be controversial, with breeders claiming their herds have been devalued due to changes in the star ratings of their animals.
The ICBF has also come under fire for a perceived lack of consultation with breeders and farmers.
The IBLA said that it will consider seeking the injunction “prohibiting the ICBF from sharing publicly any evaluations of cattle using the revised beef [indices] until the issue is resolved”.
According to the group, the meeting will allow suckler farmers, pedigree breeders and breed society representatives to “discuss the impact that the revised beef indices would have on their business interests”.
“During this meeting, the proposal made by the IBLA to use a court injunction to prevent the ICBF using the updated indices will be discussed.”
The IBLA claimed that pedigree breeders have seen “thousands of euro written off the value of all breeding stock”.
The group added that some suckler farmers will have to “reassess their own situation to comply with SCEP (Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme)”.
“ICBF have, it would seem, in the main gotten off the hook with what they have done and it must be challenged,” the IBLA said.
The group added that, over the past number of weeks, its national committee has held a series of meeting with representatives from several breed societies, claiming that the consensus from those meetings is that “legal action should be taken against ICBF to stop the use of the new indices until such a time as a full consultation process has been exercised and a full review of the indices is carried out”.