A SYSTEM of mandatory cattle identification has been credited with helping the Irish export beef industry to increase its share of the lucrative EU beef market.
The Irish system differs significantly from Australia’s on a number of levels, most notably in that it is still a labour intensive paper based system that uses bar-coded ear tags, as opposed to the electronic identification system used in Australia.
When a calf is born in Ireland, farmers are required to attach bar-coded tags to both ears immediately, and must notify the central data base of the animal’s birth within 21 days.
Why two ear tags?
No-nonsense Irish practicality is the reason: “In case one falls out”, Charolais breeder Martin Ryan, from Goldstar Charolais in Tipperary told Queensland Country Life at Beef 2009 last week.
The twin-tag policy not only improves the system’s reliability, it also helps in a practical sense by ensuring that an animal’s tags can be easily read by an electronic scanner, regardless of whether the scanner is on the left or right hand side of the race.
When cattle die on farms in Ireland, they cannot simply be buried and written off.
Their tags must first be retrieved and their deaths recorded in the system, so every single animal is accounted for.
The Irish system also differs in terms of the degree of information recorded.
A wide range of data is recorded on every animal during its lifetime.
For example every time a cow has a calf, every AI procedure she receives or every time an animal receives a pedigree score, that information is entered into the system.
So too is the actual price paid for every animal when it reaches market.
The system now makes it possible to measure and compare the actual commercial value achieved by particular bloodlines and/or particular breeds.
For example a farmer can now compare the actual value achieved by progeny of one bull with the actual value achieved by the progeny of another.
Entire breeds can also be compared.
As a Charolais advocate, Mr Ryan may well have a vested interested but reports that Charolais cattle are performing “exceptionally well” in commercial comparisons to others.
Mr Ryan said the system was introduced 10 years ago to deliver “absolute and utter traceability” for Ireland’s cattle.
Ireland relies heavily on export markets to sell its beef.
Mr Ryan puts it like this: “For every 10 cattle born, nine must find their way out of Ireland.”
Ireland exports 534,000 tonnes of beef a year, making it the largest exporter of beef in the European region.
A decade ago, more than half of that production ended up on the international commodity market, earning less than satisfactory prices for Irish producers.
The mandatory ear-tag and central data base system was introduced to achieve guaranteed traceability and, in turn, to capture a larger slice of higher value European markets.
A decade on, Mr Ryan said the guaranteed traceability had underpinned significant market advances for Irish producers.
The vast majority of Irish beef now sells into the more lucrative
European supermarket trade.
In fact less than 5pc of Irish beef today sells on the international commodity market today, he said.
In addition to exports of boxed meat, Ireland also exports 250,000 head of live cattle aged 9-10 months each year to Italy and Spain.
The Mediterranean countries prefer grain finished cattle to produce a particular meat colour, and imported live cattle from Ireland to grain feed them to their own specifications.
“To change from supplying a commodity market to higher value-added markets required an ability to guarantee traceability,” Mr Ryan said.
“Irish beef in supermarkets is now labelled ‘DNA traceable’. It is all about marketing.”
Marketing is also used to sell Ireland’s clean, green attributes. Like Australia, Ireland is an island nation and capitalises on its isolation and quarantine standards to promote the natural qualities and healthy nature of its beef.
The shift to higher value markets had also been aided by a conscientious move within Ireland’s cattle industry to produce younger beef.
* Extract from Queensland Country Life's 72-page liftout report of Beef '09, May 14.
Email a friend