Sophie Inge’s Politico article this week has highlighted a growing issue for UK beef producers that stems from the post-Brexit free trade agreements between the UK and Australia and New Zealand. Even before those agreements were signed, Peter Hardwick, BMPA’s Trade Policy Advisor, was sounding the alarm bell on the pressures it would put on British producers.

Greater access to Britain’s valuable agrifood market is highly prized by countries like Australia who produce food on a much bigger scale than us. According to the trade agreement signed in 2021, by year fifteen, we will be allowing 45 times the pre-agreemnt level of access for Australian beef. There’s a similar picture for lamb which will see imports rise to more than eight times.

The hidden problem

While a 45-times increase in access for Aussie meat is an obvious issue for our domestic producers, there’s another hidden problem that few people are talking about, which is that small volumes of certain products can have a major effect on our domestic market. And the terms of the agreement are not nuanced to take this into account.

Peter Hardwick, BMPA’s Trade Policy Advisor explains: “It’s not the amount of meat by weight that matters it is the amount of high-end, high value cuts undercutting home produced product that will have a disproportional impact on the marketplace. It will skim the top off our home market and have a very negative effect on returns. It’s this part of the animal producers and processors rely on to remain profitable.

“A 20 foot container load of beef with 17,000kg of a full range of meat cuts might represent the meat from just 60 animals. A similar shipment containing only high-value boneless sirloins would have come from over 1000 animals. If it were fillet steaks it could be three times that number.

“In simple terms if as little as 7,000 tonnes were imported as sirloins it would take 20% of the UK’s prime beef production to produce here.”

UK processors are already feeling the impacts. While official figures are not available, we are hearing anecdotally that a larger volume of high end cuts are being imported into the food service sector which has caused a drop in price achieved by domestic suppliers and damaging their ability to achieve a profitable carcase balance.

As mentioned in the Politico article, one thing that could help local producers and assist British consumers to make more informed choices is the introduction of country-of-origin labelling in the out-of-home sector, which accounts for around half of the value of food sales. Ironically, Australia and New Zealand both have such measures to help guide consumers to buy locally produced products.