Beef and lamb farmers must cut costs and improve product consistency and quality to win support from commercial customers, English Beef and Lamb Executive (EBLEX) chief executive, Richard Ali, has acknowledged.

"We quite accept that our industry has been divorced from the market place and that subsidies [under the Common Agricultural Policy] were a buffer that hid what we needed to do," he said. "That pillow has been removed and we are now facing the market place. We really need to be getting a critical mass of the industry better."

As an example, at a recent English Farming and Food Partnerships conference attended by Food Manufacture, a Waitrose red meat buyer publicly questioned the costs of domestic beef production. They varied from £2.50/kg to £2.65/kg, she said. "I can't continue to pay above market price for average quality," she warned.

Ali said action was underway to improve business in the sector. But he suggested that the red meat sector could learn from the cereals supply chain, which used hedging to offset fluctuating costs and secure supplies.

He also called on supermarkets to increase the price differential they paid for better quality products. The latest EBLEX figures showed that the average beef producer was making a loss of £94 to £430 per head of cattle.

• See 'Blake's Jerusalem preserved', p34.