My Certified Angus Beef Experience - Cáit O' Mahony

“Something I’m taking part in this year is the Certified Irish Angus Beef Competition. It is a great opportunity for us in TY. SHSS has had such success with this competition in previous years - who can forget the time Laura Clancy, Clionadh Condon, Aoife Dullea and Meadhbh Sexton won this competition in 2014? Certified Angus Beef is something our school takes great pride in. 

It was a video entry for this competition, which had to be submitted by the 19th of November 2021. It was great fun making this video, and even more enjoyable when we found out that our team got through to the next round on the 9th of December 2021. 

The next round was an interview at the Great South Court Hotel in Co. Limerick on the 18th of January. This was a bit of a nerve-racking day, but such a great opportunity as we got to experience an formal interview for the first time. Our team, Mary Rose Keohane, Nicole Sweetnam, Sinéad Kingston, and I, Cáit O Mahony, had our interview at 3.30pm. We left Clonakilty at 12pm and practised the whole way up in the car. We met the other team from our school, Aoife Whelton, Amy McCarthy, Deirdre O Neill, and Lucy Collins, above there, whose interview was at 4pm.

Our interview, definitely put us on the spot and under pressure. Our research was based on Teagasc research, RumenPredict, and SeaSolutions, and our ideas were to promote the feeds of clover and seaweed in order to reduce methane emissions, coming from our cattle. We were asked some difficult questions that made us think, such as how we would promote Angus Beef if we didn’t win the calves? While some of the questions were definitely strenuous, we feel the interview went well, and even if we don’t get through to the next round in Croke Park, it was a wonderful TY experience!”

By Cáit O’Mahony, TY Journalist.