An enterprising Scottish farmer believes he knows the secret to better beef sales.
“If we want them to pay a wee bit more, we have to give them quality and a guarantee,” said Donald McPherson, who received a Nuffield farming scholarship in 2002 to investigate international beef grading systems and propose improvements to the British system.
While it sounds simple, satisfying British consumers is a challenge if beef is tough one time and a melt in your mouth treat the next.
“We have safe beef. We have some excellent beef but we don’t have consistently excellent beef,” he told the Commonwealth Agricultural Conference that met in Calgary July 14.
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Change has already been imposed upon his farm on the Scottish border. BSE, foot-and-mouth disease and changing subsidy plans forced him to adopt a new marketing approach beyond selling commodity beef below the cost of production.
“We needed to try to do something different but we couldn’t decide what we could do,” he said.
The McPhersons started selling Angus beef to their neighbours and then moved to farmers’ markets in 2001. They now set up shop at 12 such markets a month.
“Throughout BSE and foot-and-mouth, we got the impression the public hated farmers,” he said.
Their contact with customers at the markets proved the opposite as people eagerly bought what they had to sell. People seemed pleased to meet McPherson because they wanted to know where their food came from and there was brand recognition with the Angus breed.
The beef is aged for 12 months before it goes to market and comes with a guarantee. As a joke he and his wife Sarah named their product Well Hung and Tender and the name caught on. Sales grew to the point where they started internet sales of beef packages.
McPherson’s success with direct marketing encouraged him to apply for a scholarship to learn more about meat quality issues around the world. He spent four weeks in the United States and four weeks in Australia as well as time spent studying what is done in the United Kingdom.
People tend to blame poor quality on imports from offshore and supermarkets’ generic marketing of beef, he said. While some of that perception could be changed with more branded beef programs, the product must be excellent and consistently good, he added.
“We can’t afford tough meat in branded beef.”
He said part of the problem in the U.K. lies with the European Union’s grading system, which favours continental types because it only considers conformation and meat yield. There is no marbling grade and producers are paid for weight, not quality.
“The States and Australia are at least 10 years ahead of us in terms of eating quality,” he said.
The U.S. system rates red meat yield and marbling but he does not think it would work well in Great Britain because almost all cattle are grass finished and do not marble as well as grain fed.
He was more impressed with Meat Standards Australia. In this grading system many parameters are taken into consideration and the meat receives a multi star rating. Cooking instructions are included with each grade.
McPherson recommended the U.K. buy the Australian system since the research has already been done and it could be modified for British conditions.
“Until we get a value based grading system we will be in trouble,” he said.
