Britain’s beef farmers can look forward to a fresh start and renewed opportunities on how to take the industry forward under the new Conservative Liberal Democrat coalition government.

That was the welcoming news from the majority of industry leaders, speaking at last week’s highly successful National Beef Association, Beef Expo at Hexham, attended by more than 6500 people.

Admittedly, the NBA is still to meet the new agricultural minister, Jim Paice, however, association director Kim Haywood is adamant the industry’s number one priority is to get policy moving on TB to reduce the tens of thousands of cattle that catch the infection on an annual basis and consequently have to be slaughtered.

In addition, she said the NBA would be pushing to improve the overall health status of UK cattle whilst also looking to introduce promotion campaigns to export cattle beef outwith the EU. Plans are afoot to develop a healthy, sexy image for beef marketed in this country too, based on the high value nutritional qualities of all cuts of meat.

TB is the major priority though, as between 40,000 and 50,000 head of cattle are slaughtered every year due to the virus.

“We can’t afford to wait five or six years to find out how the Welsh get on with their programme culling badgers, TB is a growing problem which is spreading 10miles a year by badgers,” said Ms Haywood. “We should be spending more attention on badgers and treating the disease as a badger problem.

Fortunately Scotland has officially been declared free from the disease. However, it is moving north, with occasional herds in Northumberland going down causing chaos in the market place.

“TB is a real menace,” said Beef Expo chairman, Scott Donaldson, an auctioneer at Wooler market. “There have been no real cases of TB in Northumberland since 2001 but the testing system is not clear. We still have herds with no history of the disease then all of a sudden they’ll go down with one reactor which means they then need two clear tests, 60 days apart when they can’t sell anything off the farm.

“There are a lot of farmers in this area who have been hit and are down from the routine four-year test for TB down to a one year test which because of the increased handling is dangerous to the farmer and his staff,” added Mr Donaldson who is heading west to work with Harrison and Hetherington.

“We now have to give the history of all animals sold through Hexham and whether they’ve come from a four-year or a one-year testing parish so we don’t see the same number of Scottish buyers looking to purchase. The whole thing has become completely ridiculous,” added Mr Donaldson.

Outwith TB, the NBA which claims it has a good working relationship with Defra, aims to look further into how to control endemic diseases such as BVD and ways in how to add value to the price of a finished animal.

“Finished beef prices have dropped 24p per deadweight kg in recent months – we can’t keep going at such a low rate of return,” warned NBA chairman, Christopher Thomas-Everard, who farms in Taunton, Somerset.

“With beef prices at 270p per kg compared to 420p for lamb, some farmers in our area are already putting on more sheep and you can understand why. If we don’t do something soon we’ll have no beef suckler farmers left in this country,” he added.

Instead, Mr Thomas-Everard said the industry should be building better relationships with the suppliers to find out how to add value to the poorer cuts of the carcase and looking to open export markets outwith the EU to find new outlets for the fifth quarter.

Ms Haywood also stressed the need for a campaign to get UK consumers eating more then the 16kg per head per annum they do at present.

“We should stop banging on about the price of beef and look at increasing consumption per head and using more of the carcase which would add value to the price of a finished animal,” she said.

“Beef has an important role to play in the diet and can be used in a weight controlled diet to combat diseases such as obesity but we have to market it with a healthy sexy image.”

Outwith the UK market the NBA called the UK government to double its efforts to open up new export markets outwith the EU, which has proved difficult due to the incidence of BSE and two major foot-and-mouth outbreaks in two separate years.

Ms Haywood added: “We need a concerted marketing campaign in which we say we’ve had BSE, tested for it, dealt with it and now have a gold star for what we’ve achieved. We need to get our cattle, our beef and beef products into more countries.”