Making life difficult

14-04-2010 | Not Specified

Selling live cattle into Southeast Asia is a tremendous opportunity for the Australian livestock industry but a strong lobby group opposing the practice is making life difficult for exporters.

At the recent Allflex Platinum Primary Producers conference, Don Heatley, chairman of Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) - the equivalent of Beef and Lamb New Zealand Ltd - said total Australian live cattle exports were worth $661 million with 768,000 cattle worth $478 million being exported to Indonesia alone.

"It is a growth market and being only four days' sailing away from northern ports is a dream one for the industry."

Heatley said lobby groups were vehemently opposed to the trade. He admitted the industry had had its dilemmas but recent statistics showed they were now able to deliver safely 99.8% of the cattle that walked on to both short and long-haul ships.

As there were no longer any meat processors with an export licence north of a line between Townsville and Perth, the live-export trade was of vital importance to cattle producers in the north of Australia.

Heatley said many green groups would like to see the demise of the industry and MLA now had a unit dedicated to raising awareness of the industry's environmental credentials.

"We have a great story to tell about our sustainable food production systems," he said.

Water is another issue where farming and environmental groups are at loggerheads. Heatley said one lobby group claimed it took 100,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef - yet independent scientific research had shown that it took a maximum of 450 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef. "We need to project our positive message above the misleading static."

Heatley pointed out that if red meat proteins were replaced with plant proteins, as many in the Green movement were suggesting, then Australia would need to put the equivalent of the states of Victoria and Tasmania under the plough.

"It can't happen but some politicians seem to be falling for it at the moment."

Australian agriculture had undergone a transformation in the past 30 years from one reliant on sheep, particularly for wool, to one reliant on cattle and sheep meat. In the 1970s there were 34 million cattle in Australia.

"We now produce more beef from a herd of 27 million, with the feedlot industry making a huge contribution by increasing both carcaseweight and value of the final product."

Diseases such as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) are one of the major threats to the industry but Heatley said recent attempts by the Australian Government to move to modern, science-based import protocols for beef from countries which have had BSE had created major debate within the industry.

"Subsequent to this misleading and over-emotional debate, the Government has reverted to the old Import Risk Analysis protocol as opposed to science-based Import Risk Assessment.

"I do not believe this is in the long-term best interest of our industry."

In the US, BSE lost the beef industry 104 markets in 48 hours and if that was to happen in Australia, which exports 65% of its beef production, the industry would be really struggling, Heatley said. "We can't afford to take that hit."

Australia relies heavily on four major markets to take its processed beef - the US, Korea, Japan and the domestic market. While all these markets are strong , Heatley would like to see more growth in the 110 other markets to which Australia exports.

Productivity, driven by research and development (R&D) would secure the future of the Australian beef industry.

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