Letter of the Week: We must act now to grasp beef opportunities

Scottish and UK beef producers have a small window in which they hold the cards in the supply chain.

Unfortunately, due to a lack of willingness to co-operate or collaborate at almost any significant level, all we will see is short-term gain and beef finishers complaining about how much tax they are paying the exchequer.

What a great opportunity it would be to offset some of that tax by buying up one of the large UK abattoirs currently on the market.

Because if the current window of opportunity isn’t capitalised on, we risk seeing foreign beef swamp us in a year’s time.

There is no better example than the flood of New Zealand lamb on the domestic market this winter, with government and retailers keen to reduce inflation and slash costs.

With a historical lack of long-term investment in improving eating quality, the UK beef sector might be vulnerable to non-EU beef with both excellent eating quality and lower costs of production.

The industry needs leadership and must strike while the iron is hot.

Jonny Williams
Earlston, Scottish Borders