The Irish Meat Association, which represents meat factories, has said it is "shocked and deeply disappointed" at the announcement by the Irish Farmers Association that it is to escalate the cattle price dispute at factories.
The IFA president, Mr John Dillon, announced yesterday that farmers would picket five meat plants for three days starting next Tuesday.
The protests will be at AIBP Cahir; AIBP Nenagh, Dawn Meats, Grannagh, Co Waterford; Dawn Meats, Ballaghaderreen, Co Roscommon, and Kepak, Clonee, Co Meath.
The IFA protests have been limited to weekends for the past five weeks and while the plants have closed down, there has only been a limited loss of production.
However, with the three-day protests in the middle of the week, production at the plants will be badly hit as farmers will not supply cattle to factories where protests are taking place.
Mr Dillon said the strong farmer protests were succeeding and had resulted in prices being maintained over the last four weeks.
He said this was particularly significant in view of the admission from the chairman of the Irish Meat Association last week that the factories were intent on pulling prices further but were halted by the farmer protests.
Mr Dillon said over the last four weeks the protests had succeeded in holding over €40 for each animal or €6 million in total in farmers' pockets as opposed to factory pockets in terms of maintaining prices.
However, the chief executive of the Irish Meat Association, Mr John Smith, said last night that the escalation of the dispute in the week of the major SIAL food fair in Paris, when Irish buyers would be seeking to maintain and get new markets, was very damaging.
Farmers, he said, had to understand that prices would be set by the marketplace, not by collective bargaining by the IFA.
The information it had distributed on the markets and prices had not been contradicted by either the Department of Agriculture or Bord Bia, the Irish food board.
The weekly kill at export meat plants was down by 2,000 animals to 35,853, according to figures supplied by the Department of Agriculture and Food.
A total of 38,164 animals had been slaughtered in the previous week but it is not clear whether the drop is due to lack of supplies because of the dispute or a general short supply of finished cattle in the grades required.