The Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) is to escalate its beef protest this weekend when it will extend it to the Dawn group of meat factories in its row over cattle prices.
In what he described as "the final showdown" with the meat factories, the IFA president, Mr John Dillon, said the protest would begin again on Sunday night and continue until late on Monday.
He said farmers would again protest outside the six Larry Goodman-controlled AIBP plants, which closed last Monday after protesters had stood outside them from late on Sunday night.
He said protests would also take place at the five Dawn Meat factories at Midleton, Co Cork; Grannagh, Co Waterford; Rathdowney, Co Laois; Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon; and Ballyhaunis, Co Mayo.
The protest will hit over 50 per cent of the State's beef processing capacity, and Mr Dillon said he was rejecting the advice of the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, not to escalate the action in case it damaged export markets.
"I want to make it clear that it is not a picket or a blockade but a protest," he said.
Farmers could not stand by while the factories pulled down the price of cattle, he added.
"Clearly, factories were acting in unison to bring down prices and only a strong, determined and unified farmer response will bring results."
Mr Dillon said this could be the only explanation for factories dropping the price of cattle immediately after the good news that Russia had dropped its ban on cattle from six Irish counties.
He said he was disappointed at the comments by Mr Walsh and said the Minister should be telling beef processors to increase the prices paid to farmers.
Despite what he termed "the blatant propaganda" by the Irish Meat Association in newspaper advertisements, the truth was that beef processors had failed Irish beef farmers.
Mr Dillon rejected the Irish Meat Association's assertion that the markets were not delivering a decent price, and said the annual accounts for the meat companies last year gave a lie to this.
At a time when cattle prices across Europe had increased by €40 per head since July, Irish cattle prices were falling despite the demand for Irish beef in the UK and Europe.
He said the protest at the Goodman plants last weekend was a "wake-up call" but it had gone beyond that now and the issue of better prices had to be resolved once and for all.
He said Irish farmers could not accept a situation where they were being paid as low as €2.24/kg (80p/lb) while in Britain, farmers were being paid £1 sterling per pound.
Beef farmers, he said, were demanding action, and the IFA was going to do whatever it could to address the issue within the law.
Last night, the Fine Gael spokesman on agriculture, Mr Billy Timmons, called on Mr Walsh to intervene in the dispute.
He said the Minister seemed to have no appreciation of the difficulties which faced Irish beef farmers and all farmers wanted was a fair price.
"They are also extremely concerned that there may be an over-concentration of economic power in certain areas."