Mr. Mark Zieg:

I want to clarify for members how much beef goes into the organic chain.

My understanding is that while leakage is a feature of these very specific schemes which come from the producer up and we experienced it in the growth of the Angus and Hereford schemes, it is closing. The more we can export - we are exporting - the less there is. We are not just going for the premium cuts as we now take a lot of forequarter beef from the organic stream and it is exported to some of the large producers of baby food throughout Europe. We have much better carcass distribution between various customers in various markets. We have other customers for round cuts in markets such as Holland. The level of leakage is very low. It is higher than that that in the mainstream sector, but there is pretty good coverage and it is getting better all the time. We have the drive to get organic products into more export markets such as China and the United States because we can improve on this figure.

On beef and lamb not being part of the leading sales, the figure is from this country and as a result of Irish consumers having high trust in the mainstream product produced here. They see very little wrong with mainstream production and are happy to buy it. Our consumer research has built up this line of thought in recent years. There are growing export markets for the product, which is why we export more of it.