SCOTLAND’S red meat industry turned out in force for industry body, QMS’ MEAT: The Future conference, in Glasgow, this week and were immediately met with some positive news – as well as some sobering statistics.

Fergus Ewing, the Scottish Government’s Cabinet Secretary for rural affairs, announced that negotiations for the repatriation of the Scotch levy from livestock sent south of the Border for processing was reaching a critical stage and that the ring-fenced fund for collaborative work between levy boards in Scotland, England Wales, had been increased from £2m to £3.5m.

“We’re nearing a solution to repatriating these levy funds and by April next year we should have cross border protocols on the levies. And, the ring-fenced fund should continue the good collaborative work done by the various levy-funded boards across the UK.”

He also said that a £100,000 'legacy fund', to further the positive messages gleaned from the QMS-run Monitor Farm system, which has been running for several years and which ends this March, would be put in place. Mr Ewing also promised that the recently announced beef climate change group, co-chaired by farmer, Jim Walker, would make some preliminary proposals in March – which, in political terms, is pretty short order since it only met for the first time two weeks ago.

The conference, of course, majored on how certain sectors of the media and in particular environmental and vegan campaigners, had fired major brickbats at the red meat industry. But, Marks and Spencer's head of agriculture, Steve McLean, said the latest stats showed that volume sales of beef were down just 1%, though the value is down 2%; while lamb is a much stronger story with volume down 2.2% and the value 1% more.

He highlighted the strong supply chain links the retailer had with Scottish suppliers – in particular its red meat collaboration with Scotbeef, at Bridge of Allan, pointing out that it sourced 2500 head of cattle and 5000 lambs from 4000 M and S Select farms each week. That served 32m customers across its 1000 stores in the UK and abroad, but the really exciting news was a hook-up with on-line trader Ocado. "This will mean that a lot of Scottish product will be sold throughout the UK, selling to a whole new range of customers south of the Border," he said.

Meeting the challenge of recent food debates was not easy, he admitted, but M and S had positioned itself well with its unique traceability scheme, verified by DNA specialist IdentiGEN. "This allows us to differentiate our product and it is also underpinned by a more thoughtful and knowledgeable customer base," said Mr McLean.

The industry needed to collaborate more, have a clearer focus on delivering on-farm efficiencies, take a responsible attitude to promoting the benefits of red meat to health and address environmental concerns, he pointed out. But, farmers needed to hit spec' more consistently with their livestock and that too many breeds added too much variability to the mix.

The conference was all about meeting challenges and QMS chief executive, Alan Clarke, said: “The industry has to change. If we don’t change, then we won’t be here in the future. Put simply, we cannot change the past, but we can shape the future,” he told the 400-plus delegates, made up from all sectors of the red meat industry, including many farmers.

Mr Clarke said QMS was re-aligning its budget spend to help mitigate against anti-meat lobbying. It will spend 130% more on taking the red meat message into educational establishments and increase market support by 88% and relaunch the Scotch Beef Club in select restaurants.

Migrant labour plea

On a wider front, James Withers, chief executive of Scotland Food and Drink, voiced concerns at recent Westminster plans which would curb the use of seasonal and migrant workers across the whole spectrum of the food production and processing sectors.

“We need that pipeline of talented and hard-working people to help us achieve our ambition of being a world leader in responsible and profitable growth,” he told delegates.

He said the entire Scottish food and drink sector was in an upward trajectory of 6% growth year-on-year – and well placed to achieve the ambitious target of £30bn in export sales by 2030 – but that would be at risk without a suitable workforce to drive it.

He called on the red meat sector to up its game in export markets, pointing out that less than 10% of production was exported. “We cannot achieve a sustainable industry if we have to rely on a handful of retailers who sell only in the UK.” As a benchmark, he said that 96% of Scotch whisky and 50% of Scotch salmon was exported.

“Retailers have helped their own businesses grow, but this has meant that we have a huge amount of business in relatively few hands. We need a better balance between domestic sales and exports,” he added.

Scotland was well placed to do well in the food tourism market, said Mr Withers. He cited that, unexpectedly, Ireland had come out No 1 – ahead of Italy and France – as the top global food destination in one survey. Co-incidentally, it had also come out top of the league of 'unexpected' food tourist success in another. "We really need to get a bit more 'Irish' in marketing ourselves as a global food destination," he joked to delegates.

On the vexed subject of red meat production in a 'climate emergency', Mr Withers said: "Bring it on. This is a phenomenal opportunity for the industry to showcase climate friendly beef production. We have a positive story to tell on carbon sequestration if we work collectively."

EUROP scale trashed

THE usefulness of the EUROP grading system as a credible system for evaluating beef, was well and truly trashed by Dr Rod Polkinghorne, one of the architects of Meat Standard Australia's eating quality (EQ) model.

Backed by years of taste testing and carcase evaluation, the EQ system grades beef on tenderness, flavour, juiciness to give an overall rating. This is then used to price various cuts of beef – and the difference can be enormous.

That hard work – which was backed by 800,000 taste tests done by 114,000 consumers in 11 countries – had produced a system which took the guess work out of buying beef, he said

"There's no eating quality relationship in the EUROP grading systems, either in terms of muscle or fat scores," he told delegates. "You are getting paid on something that means nothing."

The Australian system had shown that delivering varying quality, from 'factory' up to 5* Premium and at different prices was being appreciated by the buying public. "This means that we have gone from consumer guesswork in meat selection, to an industry guarantee of outcome."

While it remained a voluntary set-up, backed by levy funding, 3.5m head of cattle, or 43% of slaughter cattle in Australia had bought in to the process. He reckoned it had delivered additional farmgate revenue of $Aus198m and all driven by consumer demand.

"It delivers 100% reliably cooked meal performance – and Scotland is ideally placed to take a similar system on board. Remember, the future belongs to you," said Dr Polkinghorne.