Bygone Days: Farmers scheme to market meat with a wider choice on offer (1954)

Mr George Ervine, president of the Ulster Farmers’ Union, announcing details of the scheme at a press conference in Belfast, said that meat would be classified according to a wide variety of grades for selling purposes.

This would not only give the butcher plenty of scope to meet the special demands of his customers, but would also stimulate quality production he said.

He added: “A lower price for the housewife might be effected. Some of the biggest names in the home-killed meat trade will help to operate the scheme, which consists of a commercial organisation – to be registered shortly as the Fatstock Marketing Corporation Ltd.

“It will have facilities to handle at least one-fifth of the United Kingdom’s total supplies of fresh meat as soon as government control ends in July.”

This figure represented an annual turnover of about £60,000,000. It did not include the trade in bacon pigs, which, said Mr Ervine, could increase the company’s turnover to well over £100,000,000 in its first year.

Mr Ervine, who is vice chairman of the unions’ joint Fatstock Marketing Committee, explained: “The corporation’s objectives will be to improve marketing efficiency, reduce Exchequer liability and encourage production at competitive prices of the type and quality of meat the consumer wants. The company will be essentially competitive trading organisation operating in the free market. Producers can join the corporation by registering and paying a subscription of 5s. Though the corporation will also trade with non-members they will not be entitled to receive any bonuses it might award.”

The corporation was assured of facilities in many production and consuming areas, including London, the south coast, Exeter, Birmingham, Cardiff, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Tyneside, Leeds, Nottingham, Leicester, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Belfast. In London they had acquired extensive facilities in Smithfield and Islington. Arrangements had also been made at Belfast and Birkenhead to deal with the trade in stock from Ireland.

The organisation had been planned on a regional basis, noted Mr Ervine. It included the deployment of livestock procurement officers throughout the United Kingdom to keep farmers “in touch with the corporation's requirements and to explain Its methods of grading and payment”.

Through these officers and existing commercial firms in was anticipated that the corporation would buy and slaughter cattle, sheep and pork pigs, pay farmers according to dead weight and grade, and sell the meat to the trade.

It would also arrange for stock to be forwarded to buyers who wished to do their own slaughtering, and who would pay the corporation on dead weight and grade.

This was the “on the hook” system of marketing, direct from farm to abattoir, which the farmers’ unions had claimed was “more economic and better designed to reflect real market values and consumer taste than the live auction”.

Farmers were to be paid according to the actual selling grade achieved by their meat, “subject to guaranteed minimum prices”, detailed Mr Ervine.

He said: “Members will also be paid bonuses out of the corporation’s earnings based on the number and quality of animals they supplied.”

He added: “To help the consumer in choosing meat all carcases marketed through the corporation will bear a distinctive mark.”

A joint statement by the unions said that arrangements had been made with the government for the corporation to administer the price guarantees under the 1947 Agriculture Act.

The four Northern Ireland representatives on the Fatstock Marketing Corporation were Mr George Ervine, Mr Samuel Ritchie, member of the Ulster Farmers’ Union pigs, poultry and finance committees, Mr G M Fulton, past president of the union and chairman of the beef committee for three years, and Mr J J Campbell, chairman of the union’s pigs committee.