Beef groups fall out over supermarket mince trade

Any hope of a reconciliation between the two main lobbying organisations in the Scottish beef sector would appear to have been kicked over the horizon after a spat over mince.

A week ago, the newly elected chairman of the National Beef Association, Oisin Murnion, blasted the supermarkets, describing them as "lazy" in their presentation of beef.

"Supermarkets are held to be hugely efficient, forward thinking, operations but their cobwebby beef departments have either fallen into a comfortable time warp or they are culpably unaware of the supply problems they are creating for themselves in the near future," he said.

According to the NBA, multiples are taking an "indolent, near suicidal", approach to beef retailing by flooding their shelves with mince retailing at an average of 3.70 a kilo and pushing more interesting and profitable cuts, selling for between 9 and 19 a kilo, into the corners.

"Mince already accounts for half the beef that is taken home for meals and if more of it goes on the shelves then more beef cattle will be massively devalued and more farmers will give up producing it."

However, the Scottish Beef Cattle Association yesterday took sides with the supermarkets, with their development executive, Brian Simpson, stating: "Oisin Murnion needs to join the 21st century and understand the first rule of marketing, that the customer is king and dictates what he or she wants and how much to pay for it."

Simpson pointed out that mince was relatively cheap to produce and it was obvious why supermarket customers were voting with their head and purse.

"Instead of attacking supermarkets, we should at least recognise that they are continuing to stock lots of minced beef in all its guises - and we should encourage Quality Meat Scotland to do their level best to encourage consumers to demand quality assured Scotch minced beef."

Undeterred by this response, Murnion, a beef farmer from Kilkeel, County Down, who works with a herd of Galloway cattle on the wet, exposed western Mourne Mountains, then urged processors to do more to develop the export market.

According to the NBA, the processing sector's "excessive" focus on providing dominant domestic retailers with beef is visibly killing off home production because neither breeders nor feeders are earning enough to bridge the ever-widening gap between production costs and market income.

"The beef industry is being suffocated," he said, "Because of the lack of competition with the biggest domestic supermarkets for prime cattle. The multiples are therefore enjoying an iron grip on supply - and the absence of any meaningful purchasing challenge allows them to continue with discount led, domestic, retail policies which permanently undermine the value of the farmer's high cost product."

Even if beef exports are up 16 per cent so far this year, the NBA believed there was more potential in the market.

"Export competition forces multiples to pay more because home-produced beef will be harder to find and they know the majority of their customers are not satisfied with imports."