Mr. Joe Burke:

Just more than a third of the lamb output originates from hill flocks but based on lower fertility rates, and lower weights and carcase weights and so on, it is lower than that on a volume basis in terms of the throughput going through the meat plants. We work very closely with a number of the hill lamb producer groups to differentiate that product and maximise the opportunity in order to call out hill lamb. We have had some successes, including through the development of the Atlantic hill lamb brand in conjunction with an Irish processor and an Irish retailer and through, thankfully, some good collaboration. In practice, however, many of those lambs coming from the hill flocks tend to be marketed later in the year as store lambs. They then end up being finished by store lamb finishers and put into, in fairness to them, similar carcase weights, albeit at the slightly lower end of the range, at maybe 16 kg to 19 kg of carcase weight. They tend to end up in similar market outlets as the lowland lambs, towards the end of the marketing season, as hoggets.

Potential exists, through genetics, to produce heavier carcase weights that are also still lean without going over-fat but, unfortunately, we then end up with these higher weights of cuts that will result in higher price points. It is not so much the fatness in that instance as the sheer weight of those cuts, although the industry has the expertise in order to break cuts, debone them, and present them in different forms, including around breaking the leg into two parts and so on. A labour cost is associated with that along with a certain amount of yield loss. The preference has always tended to be around this grade 1 lamb. We have seen the development of muscular sheep breeds and efficient producers going down that route but where that has resulted in heavier carcase weights, it has definitely continued to present difficulties at factory and market level.