A word from the Beef and Lamb council chair

The Beef & Lamb sector is facing a period of significant change. The levy is an investment in the future of your business and the industry. You asked for change and a fresh approach to how the levy is spent – one that delivers the best value for you and helps make your business more profitable.

In May 2022, AHDB invited every levy payer to tell them what work was most important. Thousands of you responded and the message was clear. The levy should be used to support the reputation of red meat and all other work should feed into that goal.

We now know how positively you feel about marketing campaigns, increasing access to export markets, and educating consumers. And all this post-farmgate work needs to be backed up by independent insight and evidence.

As a result of your views from the Shape the Future vote and the decisions of the sector council, AHDB will be asked to focus on:

• Reputation
• Marketing
• Exports
• Insight and evidence

There have been some difficult conversations and hard decisions to ensure the results of the vote have been respected and the work at AHDB delivers the best value. The plan below sets out what AHDB will do over the coming five years and is the beginning, rather than the end, of a conversation.

All the ways you can contact the sector council and the AHDB team are at the end of the sector plan main page. We look forward to hearing from you.

Colin Bateman
Chair of Beef & Lamb Sector Council

Purpose of the levy

The Beef & Lamb levy empowers all levy payers to act together to tackle challenges and opportunities that cannot, or will not, be addressed by individuals or commercial organisations alone.

Like many organisations AHDB faces financial constraints, meaning that we the sector council have had to make some hard choices on where we put your levy funds. The levy rate has stayed the same for over a decade. In addition, inflation and changes in AHDB’s VAT status (meaning that we can no longer reclaim it) have all combined to reduce the available levy funds (from £15.4m this financial year to a projected £14.2m in 2023–24) for the sector council to invest on your behalf.