Martin Ferris (Kerry North-West Limerick, Sinn Fein) | Oireachtas source

That is the crux of the problem; the number of cattle being slaughtered weekly by individual factories and inter-trading between them. Deputy Ó Cuív referred to a beef regulator earlier to address this issue. Something must be done to ensure transparency and to give equal opportunity to producers - the farmers who produce the cattle - to know the statistics that are out there. If farmers do not have the statistics, it makes things easy for beef factories. I and many other people believe the factories have access to data which allows them to know how many cattle are coming on the market at any one time. That allows them to manipulate cattle prices for their own financial benefit.

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