Speaking at the IFA meeting of cattle finishers, Walshe said CMMS figures for December 1 last year show that the number of cattle in the 18 to 30 month age category was down 130,000 on year earlier levels, pointing to an immediate tightening in finished beef supplies.

“These facts on market returns and cattle supply numbers were in direct contradiction to the negative propaganda being used by factories and their agents over the last two weeks to drive down cattle prices.”

Mr Walshe said last week’s kill was down to 32,236 and steer supplies were back over 2,000 head at 13,502. He said supplies were already tightening and feeders needed to dig in with the factories on price.

IFA National Livestock Chairman John Bryan said that at current beef prices feeders were losing up to E100 per head. “Winter finishers are not prepared to allow factories take E100 per beef animal off their single farm payment.”

He said this was totally unacceptable when Ireland’s main market in the UK was paying the equivalent of E3.23/kg and the EU market was returning an average price of E3.31/kg.

At the meeting, there was strong criticism from farmers of factories importing Brazilian beef into Europe and onto the domestic market.

The IFA pointed out that in 2005, total beef imports into Ireland amounted to 32,000 tons worth E78.5 million, of which 8,759 tons was imported directly from Brazil.

The IFA President said that nine months after the Government had introduced country of origin labelling it was intolerable that the Food Safety Authority had not undertaken a comprehensive programme of inspections on the issue.

Source: Sligo Weekender