UK retailers buy young black-and-white bull beef

Sainsbury's Dairy Development Group members and Anglo Beef Processors have agreed to supply young black-and-white bulls in their red meat sections with Sainsbury giving a guaranteed calf price to farmers.

Sainsbury's owns 335 farms, raising about 50,000-head of cattle. Farmers can choose to sell calves at 14 days, post-weaning (12 weeks) or cull them at their own farms. Arrangements are also made for TB-restricted herds.

The supermarket retailer's chairman William Goodwin said that farmers will be delighted if there is an option to deal with black-and-white bull calves, adding the uptake could be high.

The scheme will also be in line with smaller-scale initiative to use bull calves from Sainsbury's farms to produce veal for sale in Sainsbury's stores starting 21 January 2009.

In addition, some other retailers have also arranged to deal with black-and-white bull calves coming from their dairy farmer suppliers. For example, Tesco's "Calf-link" scheme lets farmers choose if they want to send dairy bull calves to the supermarket's beef suppliers for rearing and finishing instead of exporting them.