Matt Carthy (Cavan-Monaghan, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

There is another reason retailers and processors like it, which is that it allows them to exert more control over the primary producer. In terms of the product, there is a primary producer and the end customer but the people in the middle, whom, I suspect, are making the vast of the profits being made on beef, happen to have a set of specs that allow them to, in many cases, manipulate the price they offer for the primary product, which they can then sell on to the end customer at a substantial profit.