THE recent strengthening of the euro against the pound has brought to Scotland a number of continental cattle buyers looking for a bargain.
Yesterday NFU Scotland issued a warning about the loss of store cattle to the export trade, saying it put in jeopardy future supplies of Scotch beef.
Kelvin Pate, NFU Scotland livestock committee chairman, said: "This is a potential time bomb for
the Scotch Beef brand and rings alarm bells about future supply.
"Animals from the top end of the market are being exported in huge numbers and leaving a hole in Scottish cattle numbers.
Pate said the main driver behind the trade was the exchange rate, which made it extremely attractive to come to Scotland and buy quality animals difficult to source elsewhere in Europe.
He added that one of Scotland's major processors had estimated that between 400 and 500 animals have been leaving the North-east of Scotland each week. He had personally been approached recently and had an offer for all his young bulls to go to Holland.
However, Stuart Ashworth, an economist at Quality Meat Scotland, said the data did not warrant the degree of concern shown by the union.
He said exports were indeed increasing – in the first three months of the year Ireland took 2,000 head of cattle, compared with only 100 the previous year. But half this year's Irish total was older stock, cattle over six years old that were heading straight for the abattoir.
This left about 100 cattle a week being removed from the domestic food chain – which Ashworth sees as a minor impact, considering that 9,000 cattle are slaughtered on average every week in Scotland.
Exports to mainland Europe have also increased in the first quarter of the current year, but Ashworth said the bulk of these were for the veal trade in Belgium, France and the Netherlands.
Italy is also taking more live Scottish beef cattle, especially out of the North-east, as a result of Italy's natural beef trading partner, France, being unable to trade because of its ongoing bluetongue vaccination programme.
But Ashworth stressed that the beef trade was a free market, and European supply was now much tighter than it used to be.
NFU Scotland admitted the foreign purchasing of beef was good news in the short term for producers seeking better prices.
The full article contains 396 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
