Supermarkets under fire for addiction to retailing mince

THE beef industry in the United Kingdom was yesterday advised to follow the example of their colleagues in the United States if they want to increase the value of their beef.

Still in his first month of office as chairman of the National Beef Association, Irish farmer, Oisin Murnion, hammered the UK supermarkets for their lack of marketing expertise being seemingly happy to sell as much beef as lower-value mince and not receive any premium on the meat.

This was in direct contrast to the drive for added value in selling beef in the States where processors, scientists, farmers, and retailers work together, through joint-funding, to make beef cattle more valuable.

This, claimed Murnion they achieve by searching out new cuts from the consistently undervalued forequarter and identifying ways of offering them as high value roasts and steaks.

"In contrast, some British based multiple retailers appear content to sell the greatest proportion of quality beef as mince and in so doing is condemning the entire sector to artificially reduced earnings - and the threat of ultimate economic oblivion as well."

Murnion added that he considered supermarkets in this country were addicted to retailing mince at a miserable 3.70 a kilo, and he described their inexplicable determination not to sell more innovative beef cuts and joints at higher values per kilo as suicidal.

"Every time more beef is dropped into the grinder the entire industry loses more money."

He wanted to see the red meat specialists working for the supermarkets "jolted out of their inactivity" so that everyone else in the beef supply chain could survive.

Currently, in the UK around 50 per cent of retail quality beef is sold as mince with different sections of the carcase are ground down to be offered at a bargain basement price. "This is a tragic waste of top quality suckler beef," he said.He compared this action with the position in the US where beef sector specialists succeeded two years ago in creating new cuts out of beef that would otherwise have been minced.

"After these were successfully introduced as steaks at retail level the value of beef cattle was lifted by at least 40 a head.

"We want the UK industry to take the same united approach and add value to beef instead of reducing it.

The initiative in the US was no one-off success, he claimed saying that earlier this month US researchers announced their success in identifying another six, previously undiscovered, tender muscles from the forequarter which will now be presented to consumers as steaks and roasts instead of cheap mince.

"The entire US industry is excited at this development but in the UK's current beef trading climate the discovery would be greeted with a yawn.

"The attitude of British supermarkets must change. Cheap mince cannot be produced in shelf breaking volumes just to be used as a discount lure to pull in customers from other retailers' stores because the business future of both processors and farmers is endangered by the result."