CEO of the Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) Sean Coughlan has said that the federation is "keen to engage" with breed societies, which have voted "no confidence" in the revised Euro-Star evaluations.

Agriland caught up with the CEO about the changes that are designed with the aim of aiding beef farmers in the selection of more profitable breeding animals. The podcast can be listened to here.

Over the past two months, several of the Irish cattle breed societies have issued statements outlining that they are to cease publishing ICBF evaluations in their society sales catalogues.

Coughlan said that there have been different issues highlighted for different societies, which the federation remains "committed" to resolving.

He said the evaluation will be based on how "efficient" a cow is overall, rather than one particular factor. The performance will be assessed on a "cow-by-cow basis", taking into account the individual cow's performance and the performance of their descendants.

Cows delivering a calf with a higher price per kilo will be ranked higher than cows delivering a calf with a lower price per kilo, with the weight of the calf also taken into consideration, according to Coughlan.

He said that there is "always going to be a debate" over the star ratings, but that they are based on the Teagasc economic model, which he described as "robust".

There are four changes coming out of the ICBF stakeholder forum which will be implemented this summer. These include the discussed changes to economic values and changes to weight evaluations for the Suckler Carbon Efficiency Programme (SCEP).

Weights recorded by technicians are currently used, but this will change to include weights also comprised by farmers.

Updates will also be completed in relation to data on calving difficulty. Further updates will see the development of a weanling price trade to give further credit to producers.

Coughlan shut down some theories, such as misunderstandings around data on weanlings sold for export, with some farmers not knowing if data was included in the ICBF's overall evaluations.

He said that the majority of data is captured in marts before the weanlings are sent away and used in evaluations, including the age of the animal, the price per kilo, and the weight of the animal.

Coughlan said that there "undoubtedly" could be more done to increase understanding within the farming community in terms of Eurostar indices, which he described as "complex".