PRIME CUTS OF BEEF ARE GOING TO WASTE, TOO

ACOUPLE of weeks ago, as panic- stricken shoppers descended on the nation’s supermarkets, Sainsbury’s and Asda quietly introduced a new product to their meat aisles. Labelled ‘NO FUSS lean Polish beef mince’ and retailing for the bargain price of £2.95 a pound, it helped fill the empty shelves that had until very recently held Union Flag- stamped packets of best British beef.

Farmers, when they spotted it, hit the roof, accusing the rapacious retailers of flooding the market with cheap imports.

‘It is unacceptable to us as an organisation, and, we suspect, to the British population, that you would choose to import beef from abroad at this time,’ read an open letter from the National Beef Association, questioning welfare and safety standards in Eastern Europe.

‘At a later date, when the crisis is over and the luxury of choice is handed back to the public, perhaps they will remember which supermarkets backed Britain.’

Simon Hoare, the Conservative MP for North Devon, told the retailers via Twitter: ‘THAT. IS. A. DIS. GRACE.’ An agricultural law firm from Derbyshire, Nigel Davis Solicitors, described the Polish meat as ‘ c**p’ adding ‘try selling good home grown British beef. You can’t beat it!’ Amid an avalanche of similar attacks, Sainsbury’s and Asda issued a veiled apology, saying their decision to stock the imported mince had been a one- off measure to keep supplies from running dry, and will not happen again. So far, so jolly. Yet this kerfuffle lays bare a host of far more serious ructions being felt across the British agricultural industry, where almost every sector now finds itself thrown into chaos by the coronavirus emergency. Dairy farmers are suddenly facing ruin, as the Mail reported yesterday, thanks to a drop in demand from the food service sector which is forcing them to dump millions of gallons of milk a day.

Asparagus, strawberry and soft fruit producers meanwhile fear being forced to let crops rot in the fields, as we have also revealed, because the 90,000 foreign labourers who would usually bring their harvest in are unable to make it to the UK.

For livestock farmers, who maintain the fields and lay the hedgerows that cover our green and pleasant countryside, the picture is also increasingly grim. To understand why, we must return to that ‘ NO FUSS’ Polish mince.

In normal circumstances, British beef and lamb is sold in two distinct markets. One supplies pubs and restaurants. The other is sold in retail outlets, where we buy the meat that we cook at home.

When the coronavirus lockdown started, the former market disappeared overnight. Instead, we descended on stores, spending £1.4billion extra on food and drink in a few short days, increasing meat, poultry and fish sales by a quarter. The problem, however, is that the kind of meat we buy to eat at home is very different to the sort we tuck into on a big night out. Put simply, consumers stopped buying roasting joints and expensive steaks, and instead filled the deep freezer with cheap mince.

‘People when they go out on a Friday night might treat themselves to a sirloin steak down the pub,’ says Stuart Roberts, a livestock farmer and NFU vice president. ‘At home, that gets replaced with something they feel comfortable cooking, which tends to mean an extra packet of mince for a spaghetti bolognese.’

SALES of mince increased by 45 per cent according to industry analysts Kantar. Meanwhile roasting joints, steaks, and other posh cuts that would usually be sold to restaurants were left floating around the market looking for a home. To fill the gap, shops decided to not only sell imported mince, but also turn more valuable cuts into mince.

This has, in turn, dramatically reduced the value of individual beef carcasses. ‘Brisket that goes as braising steak fetches £10 per kilo, but as mince you are looking at nearer £6,’ says Chris Gooderham, of the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, which monitors prices.

Gooderham says the average price of a beef carcass has dropped around £80, which equates to ten per cent, in recent days. Other indicators suggest the prices up to twenty per cent lower in a month. And even before that, they were at five-year lows.

‘Now beef is being sold at a loss,’ says Neil Shand, of the National Beef Association. ‘These are grim times. We cannot furlough staff. Ewes still need to lamb and cows have to calve.’

Adding to their woes, farmers face growing problems bringing their sheep and cows to market in the first place thanks to ‘social distancing’ measures which have closed some of Britain’s 250-odd abattoirs and mean that others are operating at around half normal capacity.

‘It’s a hell of a job to follow the new rules in these places, because they usually have three or four people working cheek by jowl on a single carcass,’ says Steve Evans, a dairy farmer from Pembrokeshire.

‘There will be lots of dairy cows being brought for slaughter in the coming weeks, because we have been told to cut production, so that’s going to get worse.’

Usually, a drop in supply leads to prices rising. But the extra high-end meat swashing around the marketplace means the opposite is actually happening.

Adding to their woes, Evans says, is the grading system which means farmers are paid less for cattle that are carrying too much fat. Beasts that cannot be slaughtered on schedule will inevitably spend extra time being fed.

For colleagues in the sheep industry, things are also looking grim, thanks to the collapse of exports, which account for a third of all lamb produced in the UK.

‘A week last Monday, the live weight went down 72p a kilo from £2.60 to £1.88,’ says Wyn Evans, who with wife Nicole and children Gwynfor and Ellen raises around 400 lambs a year on his farm near Aberystwyth. ‘It takes away the top end of my profit, just like that.’

Like everyone in this increasingly precarious industry, Evans hopes we will do our bit for farmers by treating ourselves to a steak for dinner, and perhaps a leg of lamb this Easter.

Washed down with a pint of British beer or – if you want to really help the nation’s food producers – a nice glass of milk.