British beef sales up amid high prices

Consumers are still happy to buy British beef despite rising prices, according to the National Beef Association (NBA) reports that consumers in UK are still buying beef amid high prices which are expected to continue in the coming months due to surging export market.

 

Kim Haywood, director of the NBA, said beef producers are weathering the recession as consumers have stayed remarkably loyal to beef despite a 15 percent price lift in retail and even bigger percentage leaps in the value of mince, sirloin and other popular cuts.

 

If ever demand falters, Haywood said unsold beef will be redirected onto the equally-buoyant export market instead.

 

She adds that short-supplied overseas customers will be happy to buy British beef for the same price in euros that they paid last autumn, despite producers earning over 20 percent more in sterling terms.

 

The NBA warned however that the industry can be hit by diseases such as diseases such as bluetongue and TB.

 

Under UK's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs match funding Responsibility and Cost Sharing (RCS) plans, the British government has asked farmers to cooperate to the costs of exotic disease outbreaks - and to help pay for surveillance and awareness work already included in the government's budget.

 

Haywood said the move will impose a headage-based levy and that government's determination to curb diseases.

 

The association said future discussion on RCS would have to focus on making it affordable.

 

Haywood added the beef industry "will have more say on how quickly post-slaughter Transmissable Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE) costs are reduced now that BSE is in dramatic decline."

 

Last year's average beef farmgate price of 259.60p per kg was a 26 percent increase on 2007.