Some farmers are threatening to withhold cattle from Irish beef-processing plants because of a fall in the prices they have been getting over the past three weeks.
Prices have dropped by €0.9 per kilo in that period and are predicted to drop further, according to Mr Joe Kilmartin, of the Irish Cattle and Sheepowners' Association.
Yesterday he urged farmers to resist selling stock for the prices being offered by factories and to stand up to the processors.
However, Mr John Smith, chief executive of the Irish Meat Association, which represents the meat plants, said yesterday that beef factories had experienced their worst six months of trading in 20 years.
"Our members have lost a lot of money because the markets are not returning profits, and unless there is a big turnaround those losses will continue," Mr Smith said.
Only 25 per cent of Irish beef going into Ireland's main market, the UK, was being sold at retail level.
The rest was going into the wholesale sector at reduced prices.
"We are having to compete with very cheap imports into the wholesale sector from Latin-American beef. In the retail sector, the British people would prefer to buy their own national product."
He said an Irish Farmers' Association (IFA) demand for a baseline price of €2.52/kg (90p/lb) for autumn beef, made at a meeting in Co Laois earlier this week, did not take account of the returns beef factories were getting from the market.
"If third-market countries were to reopen and take good volumes of beef, and the EU was to increase export refunds for selling outside Europe, then the sum might be different. But that is not the current reality," Mr Smith said.
The IFA president, Mr John Dillon, who claims credit for having put forward the plan to blockade Irish meat plants in early 2000 in a demand for higher prices, said farmers must get a minimum price of €2.52/kg this autumn.
Farmers are currently receiving €2.35 to €2.40/kg for cattle this week. They are being forced to sell animals because of a lack of fodder and a fear of a price collapse in the autumn when the market is usually oversubscribed.