News
Marketing levies set to rise for livestock
20/11/2009 08:48:00
Quality Meat Scotland recently held a meeting in Orkney regarding an increase in the livestock levies. They want to raise the levy for cattle from £4.57 to £5.50 a head, on sheep from 67p to 80p, and on pigs from £1.05 to £1.26.
The attendance was poor according Michael Cursiter the NFU Scotland's
Orkney branch chairman. He counted about twelve farmers and five QMS
representatives. The farmers that were there weren't opposed though:
"There hasn't been any rise in nine years so this is a day of
reckoning," he says.
He reckons the rise is mainly due to a decrease in sales due to the
recession. QMS itself says it needs more funds to be able to counter
the climate change and environmental lobby groups which claim that
sheep, pigs and cattle contribute to the greenhouse gases and the
carbon footprint.
"To me they don't seem to be able to prove that scientifically so I
think that is not so much the issue. It seems QMS gets less funding
from other sources, different projects they've been in earlier,"
Michael Cursiter says.
He has ideas of how to keep the levies from going up. One would be to
keep more of the slaughter of sheep and lambs in Scotland instead of
sending them off to England and Wales.