The Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, is being urged to intervene in the controversy surrounding changes to beef breeding indexes by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF).
Euro-Star Indexes quantify the genetic component of an animal’s performance across all traits of importance for Irish suckler farmers. The index is designed to help beef farmers select more profitable breeding animals.
The Euro-Star Index has two overall indexes – the Replacement Index and the Terminal Index. This is to facilitate the use of Euro-Star Indexes across different farming systems.
Some farmers may breed their own replacements, in which case the Replacement Index is most relevant. Other farmers may sell all of their suckler progeny as weanlings or take them through to
Last autumn, the board of the ICBF approved the implementation of changes to both the Terminal and Replacement beef indexes.
The changes came following an independent review as well as consultation with working groups and technical advisory panels.
According to ICBF, the changes stemmed from several years of research involving Teagasc and ICBF, arising from industry feedback and international best practice.
The Irish Beef and Lamb Association (IBLA) has called on Minister Charlie McConalogue to intervene immediately in the ICBF revised beef indexes debacle and to engage with all stakeholders in an “open and transparent” way to break the current impasse.
At the ICBF stakeholder forum, the IBLA said it requested to postpone the revised indices and revert back to the old beef indices until a full open consultation has taken place.
In a statement, IBLA stated: “The failure by ICBF to work with other stakeholders is resulting in very difficult situations on the ground for pedigree breeders and suckler farmers, the impact of which many farmers are yet unaware of.”
The IBLA claimed that the ICBF, engaged to deliver national beef herd analysis, introduced the new revised beef indices on November 28, 2023 “without consulting with those directly impacted”.
“In turn, suckler farmers are facing huge losses in the value of their stock due to the index changes by ICBF,” the IBLA has said.
Minister urged to intervene in indexes row
The IBLA has said that is now time for Minister McConalogue to step in and hear stakeholder complaints and to “protect suckler farmers as a whole”.
“It is simply unacceptable that the minister remains silent during such a critical period for suckler farmers,” the IBLA stated.
“To date, the two ICBF stakeholder meetings held have yielded little or nothing to address a number of serious questions posed by IBLA and pedigree breed societies.”
The IBLA has said that it intends to request the minister to engage directly at the next stakeholder forum.
The IBLA added: “And to ensure that an open transparent consultative process is ignited to protect pedigree cattle breeders and suckler farmers rather than allow the revised beef indexes to remain.”
The ICBF previously admitted that its communication with farmers and breed societies about the changes to the terminal and replacement indices was “sub-optimal”.
However a recent meeting with stakeholders heard that the review of the indices incorporated environmental elements of future policy and updated the economic values of the genetic traits to align with market price changes, which has not been done since 2015.