Beef producers are urged to haggle on price

With beef prices riding high, one of the sector's lobbying organisations has urged producers to abandon some of their traditional selling habits and push prices to even higher levels.

"Feeders who can draw even loads that can be delivered to processors who are desperately looking for cattle of that specification, have known for months that list prices are meaningless," said National Beef Association director, Kim Haywood.

"Much improved deals, some of them quite extraordinary, can be negotiated over the phone."

A large number of mainly smaller finishers had still to drop the habit, established over decades of selling on a buyers' market, of ringing their regular processing company, booking their cattle in, and accepting whatever price they get.

"Booking in without negotiating a price is folly at a time when every processor in the UK is short of cattle," said Haywood.