Michael McNamara (Clare, Labour) | Oireachtas source

First, I should outline what the quality assurance scheme is, as many Members of the House are not acquainted with it. The quality assurance scheme was developed by Bord Bia, and it is important to bear in mind that this is a State agency, because the cost of developing this scheme was borne by the State.

It is an excellent initiative because it ensures that quality-assured food that is produced and processed in this State will have the Origin Ireland quality mark, a little mark featuring the tricolour that is often seen on food packaging. It means those products have been produced with the highest level of care and attention from the farm through to arrival on the shop shelf. It is a story of high-quality standards against which members of the quality assurance scheme are regularly audited by An Bord Bia.

There are currently 36,000 food producers in the country, and 122 processors and packers are certified as quality-assured. In addition to meeting strict legal requirements, farmers are audited against a range of standards, including those relating to animal health and animal welfare. Animal welfare is increasingly important for consumers and they are keen to know that animals are properly treated on the farms. Other standards relate to traceability, water and feed and pasture management. This last standard presumes that cattle are largely grass-fed. The fact that cattle are grass-fed and grass-finished gives Irish beef a unique flavour, which we get not only from Irish cattle but Irish sheep as well. The unique taste of Irish meat is increasingly recognised abroad. I spoke to a German yesterday evening who told me that dry-aged Irish beef now retails at between €40 and €60 per kilogram in Germany. I am unable to verify these prices, but it is certainly far higher than the price at which Irish beef is retailing in Ireland. This indicates that we have a prime product at our disposal, one that costs a good deal for Irish farmers to produce.

Notwithstanding all of this, over 90% of all beef produced on Irish farms is produced under the quality assurance scheme and on quality-assured farms, yet fewer than half of the producers or farmers who brings the animals to the slaughterhouse get any bonus for that. This is clearly an abuse of a system designed to ensure that good-quality beef is being produced. The producers who bear the cost of producing this product are not being rewarded for it. The reason is that additional conditionality has been added by the processors. They maintain they will only give the bonus to quality-assured beef from a quality-assured farm when the animal is under 30 months.

I am unsure whether the Minister of State or any Deputy in the House knows the age of the beef they are eating, but I suspect not. A person from my office went into the five supermarkets in Ennis - namely, Aldi, Lidl, Centra, which is from the Musgrave group, Tesco and Dunnes Stores, and asked someone in each shop the age of a certain piece of beef for sale. Only one person was able to answer, but he said he had never been asked that before. It is not something that consumers request or want. Rather, it has been imposed by processors. They are imposing it because generally cattle are not fit to kill until they have lived through their third summer on Irish grass. Previously, factories had to pay a premium for cattle that were ready to go to the processing houses earlier. Therefore, they brought in the 30-month requirement to flush them out, bring them in early and drive down prices for the producers. That is simply wrong, and I am concerned about it.

I support the setting up of the beef price forum by the Minister, but I am concerned that the outcome will not sufficiently address the matter. I note from the outcome produced by the Department that processors agreed to a targeted cost-neutral price incentive for all steers and heifers from quality-assured farms. That sounds good on the face of it: a targeted cost-neutral price incentive. However, the quality pricing system introduced in 2009 was to be price-neutral, but an analysis of the system carried out by an independent journalist, Martin Ryan, has shown that three years after the introduction of the quality pricing system the payment was far from price-neutral. The total average yearly penalties applied to O-grade cattle amounted to €3.2 million, while bonuses of €1.5 million were paid to producers of U-grade cattle. This indicates that a reduction of €2.15 million was taken from farmers' cheques in a supposedly price-neutral endeavour. For this reason I am doubtful about the idea that it can be price neutral. Farmers incur a cost in producing quality-assured cattle. The State incurs a cost as well. The product is prized in Germany and many places. The producers get a premium for this but they are not passing it on to the farmers. The Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine is not forcing them to pass it on to the farmers, notwithstanding the fact that the quality assurance scheme is a State-sponsored endeavour.

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