Northern Ireland cattle prices used to manipulate beef market

The UK's largest supermarket beef suppliers have such tight control over Northern Ireland's prime cattle market they could make it into a private supply pool on an almost constant basis to manipulate market prices in other parts of the UK and Ireland, according to the National Beef Association (NBA).

 

In doing so, they could pay much less for cattle in all parts of the British Isles and farmers across both these EU countries will lose out, the NBA said.

 

Powerful companies, which have large plants in Britain, Northern Ireland and Ireland, are able to take advantage of their geographical positioning to ensure they always pay the lowest price possible for the huge numbers of cattle they buy between them, said NBA's Northern Ireland chairman Oisin Murnion.

 

They are helped by the fact that beef from Ireland accounts for about 60 percent of Britain's prime beef imports and it is easy to bring in huge numbers of cattle from Ireland into Northern Ireland for immediate slaughter if tighter supplies within the Province look like moving prices to levels closer to those most often seen in mainland Britain,'' Murnion said.

 

The usual price gap between prime cattle of similar classification and quality in Northern Ireland and Great Britain is 20p-25p per kg deadweight. It is 22p at present which is the equivalent of around GBP75 a head.

 

This large pool, which accounts for about 11-13 percent of total UK supplies, of deliberately discounted beef is constantly used to force down the price of UK cattle if strong consumer demand looks like it could lift prices far above discounted Irish levels, Murnion said.

 

Over recent months, the Northern Ireland cattle price has been constantly diluted by the importing of up to 920 cattle per week from Ireland, equivalent of 13 percent of weekly plant throughput in the Province, even though the adverse sterling-euro exchange rate has made them more costlier than domestic cattle in sterling terms, he said.

 

Murnion said the delivery suffocates the price of the remaining 87 percent and dampens down prime cattle values on a cross-Britain basis, which benefits slaughterers.

 

He claimed it is no accident that the most powerful companies supply three of the UK's largest supermarkets.

 

If their stranglehold on Northern Ireland's cattle price and supplies is not enough to deliver the additional margins they gain from buying cheaper cattle, Murnion said, they simply increase the proportion of deliveries they secure from Ireland where cattle are also significantly cheaper.

 

Beef farmers in Northern Ireland suffer most but those in Britain and Ireland are also victims because the origin of beef aimed at most of the UK's biggest buyers is constantly manipulated to make sure that tighter supplies in any of the three main cattle procurement pools are never allowed to translate into prices that accurately reflect the regional demand-supply balance, according to Murnion.