The good times, it seems, have returned to the beef industry. Farmers want to see the effects in their pockets but are being told the price is already right, reports Seán MacConnell.
In January 2000, the then leader of the Irish Farmers' Association, Tom Parlon, coined a new word in trade disputes: "pickade".
A "pickade" is a hybrid - half picket, half blockade - and it proved to be an expensive but effective weapon for the IFA and the beef farmers seeking 90p per pound weight for the cattle they were selling to the factories.
The use of the pickade landed the IFA in the High Court and eventually cost the organisation £750,000 in fines and legal costs. But it also forced higher prices out of the factories.
That action took place at a time when the beef industry was doing well and farmers were alleging that the factories were not passing the benefits on to them.
Peace prevailed during 2000 until December of that year, when a fresh BSE crisis broke out on the Continent after beef from a BSE-infected herd was found to have entered the food chain in France.
Factories and farmers were in trouble as beef consumption tumbled.
Eventually, the EU and the Irish taxpayer paid both to take 500,000 cattle off the market - mainly by slaughtering and destroying them and storing others - as part of two special schemes.
These schemes, which cost the Irish taxpayer £200 million, underpinned the beef markets last year.
But the problem was masked by the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease that concentrated the collective mind elsewhere.
A change of leadership in the Irish Farmers' Association and an upswing in demand for Irish beef abroad has once again brought the IFA to the gates of the factories.
The farmers want higher prices, which the factories claim have been artificially high and cannot be justified from market returns.
Apart from internal tensions within the main farming organisation, the demand for action came on foot of an announcement at the recent Agricultural Science Association Conference by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, which more or less indicated that the good times had returned in the beef sector.
Exports to Britain, he said, had more than doubled, and the removal of a Russian ban on taking beef from six Irish counties meant that exports could double to that country.
Beef consumption in the premium markets in the EU, he said, was nearly back to normal. He was working on getting higher export refunds from Europe to help expand business in Egypt.
The Irish Meat Association, which represents the factories, claims the farmers have got it wrong and that markets have not returned to anywhere near the pre-BSE crisis of 2000.
The association spent thousands of euro on newspaper advertisements last week outlining its position.
It says prices paid to date this year are approximately 2 per cent higher than over the same period last year, and that the removal of the Russian ban does not mean that the Russians will buy Irish beef at a higher price.
It also says that while the UK market had expanded, the commercial reality is that 75 per cent of Irish beef sold there goes to the lower-priced wholesale, manufacturing and food services sector where it faces stiff pricing competition from South American beef.
The IFA, on the other hand, claims that prices paid for cattle this September are 13 per cent lower than this time last year, and that cattle prices have been cut by €95 a head since early July.
While the IFA is protesting - and not "pickading" any of the plants - farmers will not deliver animals across those protest lines.
While some factories have their own supplies, these are estimated to be less than a fortnight's kill.
With relations between the two sides deteriorating, "pickades" could well be the next step.