Ireland: No export benchmark price tracker for lamb – Bord Bia

Bord Bia has said an export benchmark price-tracker for lamb, similar to the beef tracker, cannot be built with any “level of robustness” at this time. Although the Irish food board acknowledges that a price tracker would add “transparency” to the marketplace it has identified a number of factors, which it said would make developing an “accurate” price tracker “very difficult or impossible”. According to Bord Bia there is currently no mandatory sheep classification and price reporting in the EU or the UK. “Lamb prices are not available by individual grade or category, but, instead, average prices are reported on a voluntary basis by individual member states for heavy and light lambs. “There is a lack of detailed data by grade combined with variations in how prices are calculated which makes it difficult, impossible to make like-for-like comparisons,” Bord Bia said. Advertisement The food board also highlighted that different regions report different weight ranges in order to ...