Features
Beefing up the Market
Award winning organic butcher Danny O'Toole believes that, in terms of the development of the Irish market, organic meat producers have reached an important crossroads.
The fact that there had been several years of good prices for organic cattle made this year's crisis in the organic beef market all the more dramatic. Many organic beef farmers suddenly found themselves without an organic market and were forced to sell their finished animals at conventional prices. The decision by a British supermarket chain to buy only British meat caught Irish organic producers by surprise. With the loss of this lucrative export market, the Irish market was very quickly oversupplied. 'It has been a rough year for farmers,' agrees butcher Danny O'Toole. 'It's the result of farmers becoming over-dependent on one export order with Sainsbury's. Now they've been left high and dry.' Ireland's first organic butcher, Danny has been in the organic meat business for over ten years, with two fully organic outlets in Terenure and Glastule in Dublin.
Unsustainable prices
'Farmers have been doing very well in recent years,' says Danny. 'But the price of organic meat is too high. Everyone knows in their heart that it can't be sustained.' Over the years Danny has argued consistently that prices have to come down. All the consumer surveys show that a 20% premium is what the average shopper is prepared to pay for organic food. With higher organic premiums the demand falls off very sharply. Danny finds it a lot easier to get quality stock these days compared with a few years ago. 'When I started I had to take a lot of undesirable cattle simply because there was nothing else. Quality is improving and supply is becoming more consistent.'
Smaller breeds
Like many butchers Danny has a preference for the smaller breeds of cattle. He likes Hereford and Angus but considers most of the continental breeds too big. 'Limousin would be the best of the continentals,' says Danny. 'The cuts from a Charolais are too big and there is a massive bone loss with animals that size.' As regards lamb, Danny favours the Suffolk and Texel breeds. Many of his customers buy organic meat for health reasons. In particular young mothers like to give it to their children. There is a also a significant demand coming from people who have respect for animals and believe, that in buying organic meat, they are getting meat from an animal that has been treated ethically and had a good life.
Awards
Danny is no stranger to awards. Recently he took three prizes including the overall awards in a national competition run by the Association of Craft Butchers in Ireland. Naturally he likes to display them in his shop in view of his customers. But at the rate he's picking up awards, there's a danger that he will soon run out of room.
Price
Over the years every interview with Danny comes back to his views on price. While farmers would be quick to point out that they never met a butcher who didn't complain about the price he had to pay to farmers, the events of this year suggest that Danny's view has some merit. If organic prices had been lower over the years, the Irish market might have developed more. With a higher level of demand, the home market might have been able to cope with this year's unexpected increases in supply. Danny doesn't believe that the current price differential will last much longer. He reckons that countries like Denmark have woken up to their potential to become a major exporter of organic meat and, with considerable state support, they are gearing up to supply Europe.
Shrinking organic sector
He argues that the high prices charged by organic producers are keeping the organic market as a small niche market, and it's a market that is in danger of disappearing. 'Unless organic meat becomes more affordable, the market will be taken away by other countries, ' says Danny. 'Then the organic sector will shrink back to the way it was twenty years ago, with only a few committed farmers who are attracted to an organic lifestyle.' Given the indisputable quality and taste of Irish organic meat, it would be the height of folly to allow the market to be taken over by cheaper and inferior imports. It's bad enough that the market for organic processed food and the fruit and vegetable markets are almost totally dependent on imports. As Ireland's best know organic butcher says, 'It could only be a matter of two or three years before it will be possible to pick up the phone and order organic meat from abroad.'
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