€5,000 raised to fight Beef Index changes
A fund set up by the Irish Beef and Lamb Association (IBLA) to seek legal opinion, with a view to getting an injunction to stop the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) implementing its new beef breeding indexes, has raised €5,000.
Farmers and farming organisations have been heavily critical of the new indexes, which were announced late last year, saying breeders of continental cattle are unhappy with the changes, which would be “challenging” for some breeds.
ICBF has insisted the science-based approach will leave the majority of beef farmers better off. CEO Sean Coughlan told the Farming Independent that a stakeholder forum would take place in the coming weeks where it will engage with people and their concerns.
At meeting in Athlone on Thursday night, organised by IBLA, it was decided to set up a ‘Go Fund Me’ page asking suckler farmers to contribute towards a goal of raising €5,000 for a legal opinion on the matter.
Yesterday, it issued a statement saying it had reached step 1, in a two-step process to raise funds for its campaign to seek an injunction.
“We would like to thank all (members and non-members) who donated to the initial target of €5,000 that allows us seek legal opinion. Now the work will commence to protect suckler farmers in Ireland from being potentially exposed to a devaluation of their livestock and the long-term viability of their farms.”
Revoke
At the meeting, it said the next step will be to press ICBF to revoke any actions taken and to return to at least the previous set of evaluations in place
“If this is not agreed, then 20,000 suckler farmers will be asked to subscribe €1 each to the Go Fund Me page in order to progress an injunction in the high court to stop ICBF from wiping millions of euro off the values of our suckler cows,” it said.
All farmers can subscribe, IBLA said, and there will be a maximum upper ceiling and a cut-off on the funding that the Go Fund Me page can take in.
IBLA said thousands of suckler farmers have had the values of their suckler herds decimated due the actions of ICBF last year.
ICBF said the implementation of improvements to both the Terminal and Replacement beef indexes is the result of an independent technical review and consultation with a focus group.
These changes stem from several years of collaborative research between Teagasc and ICBF, on the back of industry feedback and international best practice.
It said the fundamental improvements to the genetic evaluations include: updates to the economic values on individual traits to better reflect the markets; inclusion of carbon to future-proof our breeding policy; and the inclusion of new traits to better reflect the changing market requirements and improved methodology in how animals are genetically evaluated.