Sheep farmers have accused the meat factories of forcing them out of business by cutting the price they are paying for lamb.
Over the past five days the factories have cut the prices they had been paying to farmers by €20 per lamb, Laurence Fallon, a major producer of lamb in the west of Ireland, said last night.
Mr Fallon, who is chairman of the Irish Farmers Association's national sheep committee, said the collapse of the spring lamb prices would backfire and force sheep farmers out of business.
"The factories must realise under the new decoupling policy uneconomic lamb prices will mean reduced production", he said. He pointed out that over the last 10 years, ewe numbers in Ireland have fallen by one million to 3.5 million.
"At unviable lamb prices, this exodus from the sheep sector will continue," he predicted.
He said factories were paying €5.46/kg (195p/lb) last week, but some processors had pulled quoted prices down as low as €4.48/kg (160p/lb) on Monday, even though some smaller abattoirs were still paying €5.32/kg (190p/lb) yesterday.
The cuts, he said, were totally unjustified as there was only a very small supply of spring lamb available at this stage of the year.
"This short-term opportunism by the meat factories will compound the seasonality problem in the sheep sector and drive producers out of early lamb production. Irish lamb will only be available mid-summer and consumers will be forced to rely on imports at other times," he said.
Mr Fallon said producers were demanding meetings with factory managers where the managers would be told they must halt the price drop.
A spokesman for the factories said that as in all areas of processing, the product price was determined by the market.