The Irish Charolais Cattle Society is the latest society to decide not to print figures or star ratings on catalogues for its society cattle sales this year.
These figures and star ratings are generated by the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and the Charolais society is the third Irish cattle breed society to cease publishing ICBF evaluations in its sales catalogues.
A statement from the Irish Charolais Cattle Society said: “Due to the lack of confidence in the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) Euro-star indexes, council have decided to remove all Euro-star indexes from all our sales catalogues with immediate effect.”
Earlier this week, the The Irish Salers Cattle Society also announced it had decided not to print figures or star ratings on catalogues for its society cattle sales this year.
The decision from the Salers society was reached at its council meeting which took place in Athlone, Co. Roscommon, on Sunday, January 26.
In a statement issued to Agriland, the Irish Salers Cattle Society said: “It has become increasingly difficult to breed top-end animals in the flesh and still maintain figures within the top 20-40% of the herd book.
“Most pedigree or commercial farmers with Salers cows would classify their best cows weighing between 700-800kg. This type of cow has a huge capacity to calve and enough carcass weight to drive progeny into heavy weights in the meat factory.
“The Teagasc/ICBF evaluation model is built around a cow that weighs between 500-600Kg. This is shown clearly on the ICBF active bull list where the average daughter live weight of the top 10 bulls interbreed weigh just over 550Kg,” the statement said.
In December last year, the Irish Simmental Cattle Society passed a motion of ‘no confidence in the ICBF’ and a second motion ‘to cease publishing ICBF evaluations in sales catalogues’ at its annual general meeting (AGM).
In December 2023, the ICBF confirmed it would convene a beef industry stakeholder forum on the changes to replacement and terminal breeding indices for beef animals.
These changes were approved in October 2023 and have faced significant backlash from a number of cattle breeders who were negatively impacted by the changes.