Some restaurants across the country have decided to remove beef, in particular fillet steak, from their menus due to the cost of purchasing the food product.

That's according to panellists who were speaking as part of a discussion at the Good Food Ireland conference at the Anantara The Marker Hotel in Dublin today (Tuesday, March 25.

Participating in the panel were Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) president, Francie Gorman; Una Fitzgibbon, director of marketing with Bord Bia; Peter Ward, owner of Country Choice Nenagh; and executive chef at The K Club, Co. Kildare, Gary O'Hanlon.

The title of the discussion was 'From Farm to Table: Building a Resilient Food System in Ireland'.

Francie Gorman commented that the prices paid to farmers in recent months are "good" but added that "it's not before its time". The IFA chief explained that beef price is high at the moment because cattle numbers are low but that farmers "needed that price increase".

"It's those price increases at times like this that sustain you through the difficult times when the cost of production goes up, " he said.

The IFA president said that the initiative 'Project Connect' will also help educate and inform consumers about how their food is produced, a collaboration between stakeholders such as Bord Bia, Teagasc, Irish Cattle Breeding Federation (ICBF) and farm organisations.

"It's a whole-of-industry approach to communicate what we do [well] in agriculture," he stated.

He added that "sustainability has come at the cost of a reduction in production" but said that farmers have been on the sustainability journey already for about 25 years.

While he acknowledged that the price of steak is high at the moment, in some cases mentioned as being as high as €50, Gorman explained that it's a cyclical trend and that there is more than just the cost of the beef included in the end steak price.

He said consumers are not aware that often the beef producer only gets about 10-20% of that final price and factors such as energy costs, labour, regulation implementation all contribute to the final price.

Gorman said the current beef price is "getting people [farmers] out of a hole of a decade of bad prices".

When questioned as to why supermarkets don't appear to be supporting the primary producer enough, Gorman said that there is a margin in the food chain "that doesn't seem to be identifiable".

Panellist Peter Ward said he was recently in the UK where he saw a fillet of steak priced at £86/kg in a butcher shop.

Gary O'Hanlon admitted that for the first time, he has now had the conversation about removing beef from the menu (at The K Club) and said "at the end of the day, the customer is king and people won't pay it".

Una Fitzgibbon added that these types of market circumstances are cyclical an things can change rapidly.

She outlined that the next Common Agricultural Policy focuses heavily on food security and that the horticulture sector can play a significant part in this respect.