New initiative announced to develop a UK beef market from male dairy calves

INDUSTRY leaders, politicians and animal welfare charities have given their backing to a scheme to develop a domestic beef market from black and white male dairy calves.

The scheme aims to produce more beef from British cattle, negating the need to import hundreds of thousands of tonnes of beef every year.

Following 18 months of intense research and debate, forum members – which included representatives from farming organisations and retailers – agreed to develop economically viable outlets for rearing and finishing dairy calves.

At present the 482,000 dairy calves born in the UK each year are either killed or exported to continental veal farms.

The forum concluded that slaughtering or exporting dairy calves was "wasting a valuable resource to the British beef industry that has the potential, given appropriate market conditions, to directly increase farm incomes and inject more work into the economy".

The new initiative will see calves enter the domestic supply chain in an attempt to make up the current 250,000 tonne shortfall in production each year in the UK beef industry.

Royal Association of British Dairy Farmers chairman Lyndon Edwards said: "We welcome this initiative to find a home market for dairy bull calves.

"If it becomes really successful, eventually there may no longer be any calves available for export.

"In fact, dairy farmers would be much happier if they could rear all their calves to produce prime British beef.

"The practice of having no alternative but to put them down is one of the most depressing aspects of a farmer's life."

Retailers including Sainsbury, Tesco and Waitrose were involved in the forum, and have agreed to push forward to develop a market for British beef from male dairy calves.