Denis Naughten (Roscommon-Galway, Independent) | Oireachtas source

I thank the Minister of State, Deputy Doyle, for coming to the House. It has been a very difficult year for beef farmers, particularly suckler beef farmers, throughout the country. I was surprised with the reply I received last week to a parliamentary question I had tabled to the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine about the operation of beef grading machines in meat plants throughout the country. In the past two years, inspectors from the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine have found 21 beef grading machines to be working outside the rules set out for their operation. Manual grading of carcasses was introduced immediately in all of these cases. An interesting aspect of these figures is that even though 21 machines in meat plants were taken out of operation by the Department in the past two years, just four weighing scales were taken out of operation during the same period by the National Standards Authority of Ireland, which regulates weighing instruments in all meat processing facilities throughout Ireland. These figures are adding to the concern of farmers regarding the accuracy of grading machines. This concern is compounded by the complexity of the beef carcass classification scheme itself. With the development of technology, it should now be possible for farmers to be supplied with a digitised image of the carcass of each animal on the actual day of slaughter.

Last week, I tabled a parliamentary question to the Minister, Deputy Creed, to seek to ascertain "in the case of each of the 21 instances ... the number of carcasses that were rechecked by the manual grader back to the last known point of accuracy" prior to the Department identifying the misgrading of those carcasses. According to the reply I received from him, there is "no mechanism to permit an officer to pinpoint exactly when the machine went out of tolerance". Control reports are done on a weekly basis by the supplier of these machines to the meat plants, but they do not report on the miscalculating of grades. That is the standard set out by the Department here. I find it interesting that in the UK, the rules dictate that the operator must check each machine daily and must keep daily control reports on the automated grading. Those reports must specifically include any faults or inaccuracies, as well as the actions taken where necessary to address them. In the UK, these machines are checked daily and inaccuracies are recorded. In Ireland, one week's full kill of animals could go through an inaccurate grading machine where the grading is at least one if not more subclasses out in relation to that grade.

What does this mean in plain English for farmers? In the cases of the 21 machines I have mentioned, the miscalculation of grades was at least two subclasses. I will give an example. If a miscalculation causes an O+4 bullock to be graded as an O-4 bullock, the farmer will lose 18 cent on the grid and 12 cent on the quality assurance payment. If it is an Angus animal, the farmer will lose 10 cent off the Angus bonus. In the case of a bullock of average weight, €139.60 would be taken out of the hands of a hard-pressed beef farmer. I will give a final example. If an O= animal is misgraded as a P+ animal, the 24 cent loss caused by the miscalculation will result in an overall loss of €84 for the farmer.

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