Dairy industry fears last year that farmers might have to dump milk as a result of Covid-19 processing shutdowns were “genuine” Dairy Industry Ireland (DII) director Conor Mulvihill has said.
He pointed to the closure of a number of plants due to Covid outbreaks earlier this year.
The Farming Independent reported in March 2020 that intense discussions took take place between processors and farm organisations in a bid to stave off a possible “catastrophic failure” of the dairy supply chain.
The reports were dismissed as “scaremongering” in some quarters and as an attempt by co-ops to “talk-down the milk price”, while farm organisations opposed any moves to restrict production at farm level.
The concerns centred on the extremely tight national processing capacity available during peak seasons, with fears that if a plant shut down as a result of a Covid outbreak, there would not be sufficient capacity to process all milk supplies.
Speaking to the Farming Independent, Mulvihill described the performance of the industry during the pandemic as a “very good story” and highlighted significant disruption experienced in other countries.
He said the sharp fall-off in Covid-19 incidence in the late spring and early summer was a key contributor to staving off a processing crisis.
“If the spike in cases that we saw in January occurred, say this week or a year ago, make no mistake about it, there would have been a collapse of the system,” Mulvihill said.
Looking forward, he said the pandemic is unlikely to impact the processing of what is expected to be a record milk production season at farm level this year.
Covid, however, remains a “clear and present” danger to the industry, Mulvihill said adding that the Government’s mandatory quarantining policy for travel was among the concerns for the sector.
“At present, we are working at approximately 99pc capacity; if a plant was to go down and require a specialist engineer from outside the state, we cannot afford for that person to be held in quarantine for 12 days,” he said, adding that he is working with the Government to find a solution.