Potential for new offal markets

By Becca Wilkins

- Published: 19 February, 2007

There is potential for offal to inject a much needed source of profitability into the UK meat industry the chairman of EBLEX has said.

Addressing delegates at the EBLEX National Producer Conference last week, John Cross said that results of an EBLEX working group, which had been studying the potential of the fifth quarter in the beef processing sector, would be published next month.

He said: "Not too long ago, fifth quarter sales met English abattoir processing costs - as they still do in many other countries that we are competing with."

He said the past decade had seen significant waste disposal costs imposed on this highly regulated sector, and entry to overseas markets had been limited.

"The opening up of the beef market now means the UK has access to customers in Europe and beyond who place a higher value on what we call fifth quarter cuts, such as skirt, tripe, liver and tongue - significantly more so than British consumers," Cross said.

The EBLEX cross industry working group has been investigating ways to reduce abattoir waste disposal costs and finding new markets for lamb, beef and offal.

Cross said the outcome of this investigation would include ways for EBLEX and others to encourage English consumers to take a fresh look at offal.