Commercial beef prices being offered at meat factories continued to slide yesterday as the impact of the BSE crisis dealt a further blow to farmers.
Some meat plants were not accepting cattle for beef production at all, and more of them were expected to switch over to the Slaughter for Destruction Scheme before the end of the week. This is in the wake of prices only matching the level available under the EU cull.
Meanwhile, it has emerged that the Department of Agriculture and the Environment Protection Agency have been in discussions to grade specified risk materials (SRM) in a new way to overcome acute waste management problems.
The EPA was yesterday considering a suggestion from the meat-processing trade that SRM - the organs in which BSE is considered most likely to manifest itself - could be divided into high-grade and low-grade.
The meat industry has asked the EPA to license another plant to render "low-risk" SRM from animals already tested negative for BSE and from cattle under 30 months of age which are considered unlikely to contain BSE.
Only one plant in Ireland - Monery, in Cavan - is authorised to render the SRM removed from animals killed in the Republic. But it has been licensed to deal with only 1,000 tonnes a week. As a result of the EU's inclusion of the entire intestine as SRM, the bulk of the material has increased six-fold and the Monery plant is unable to cope.
SRM from the animals being slaughtered - nearly 100,000 since the beginning of the year - is building up in coldstores throughout the State until it can be dealt with at Monery.
The urgency has increased following objections to the interim licence issued by the EPA for a rendering facility at Ballinasloe, Co Galway. The EPA is thought to be examining some of the eight other rendering plants which deal with nonSRM material and animals from the EU Slaughter for Destruction Scheme, with a view to reviewing their licences to allow this lower-risk SRM to be processed.
The expected slide in the commercial beef trade has started, with farmers now being offered the same price for commercial beef as beef going into the EU Slaughter for Destruction Scheme. The factories are being forced to do this because German beef is flooding EU markets, where there is already a surplus.
Already about 1,000 tonnes of German beef have been imported. It is believed to have been processed for the catering trade in the Republic. Industry sources said yesterday it was "highly unlikely" that factories would continue to slaughter between 15,000 and 20,000 cattle a week for markets which no longer existed.
"They had been killing up to 20,000 animals a week for the commercial markets but the surplus of German beef makes a continuation of that impossible," one source said.
"It looks now as if the factories and the farmers will be forced to rely on the Slaughter for Destruction scheme, which was set up to take surplus beef off the market," he added.
Nearly 40,000 cattle have been slaughtered and destroyed since the scheme began on January 10th last.