Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marinecc-byData covers 2019–2023
· dataset listing last updated 2024-03-06T13:50:58.257372
Weekly beef kill numbers rose 18% over five years, driven by a sharp 19% jump in late 2020 before peaking in 2022
Why this matters
The rise reflects Ireland's post-2015 dairy expansion, which drove slaughter up 2% in 2020 as processing plants handled more cattle. The 2020 census showed a record dairy herd—up 46% since 2010—alongside falling beef cow numbers, fundamentally reshaping the national beef supply and putting pressure on factories and markets to absorb growing volumes from dairy-origin animals.
Average weekly kill numbers climbed from 4,077 at the end of 2019 to 4,797 by the end of 2023, an 18% increase over the period
The sharpest single-year rise occurred in late 2020 with a 19% jump, likely reflecting pandemic-era supply chain adjustments and market conditions
Weekly kill numbers peaked at 5,001 in late 2022 before declining 4% in 2023, suggesting the sector may have reached capacity or faced demand constraints
Steers accounted for the largest share of all animals processed (2.37 million head), running 27% ahead of heifers (1.73 million)
By total Number, 'C' leads all Classification Cateogory categories with 2373415, 27% ahead of runner-up 'E' (1734314).View underlying data
Category
Value
C
2373415.0
E
1734314.0
D
1317773.0
A
469412.0
V
106726.0
B
99627.0
Z
6141.0
The sharpest period-over-period move in Number was +19% at 2020-12-31.View underlying data
Period
Number
2019-12-31
4077.4286
2020-12-31
4863.022
2021-12-31
4634.9643
2022-12-31
5001.3489
2023-12-31
4797.0539
A caveat worth knowing: The dataset covers 2019–2023 but the final entry is December 6, 2023, so the 2023 figure represents a partial year
API endpoint used: https://opendata.agriculture.gov.ie/datastore/dump/49d0db3a-96c5-4ae1-a5aa-068df27b1788
Licence: cc-by
Selected automatically — interestingness score 65/100
(has a time dimension, multiple numeric fields, and/or a categorical breakdown;
see the project's scoring method for details).
Published 2026-10-18T10:32:33.465187+00:00.
Generated automatically by Ireland Open Data Analyst — every quantitative claim above
was checked against a computed value before publishing.