Josie Angus@AngusJosie
Own goals....
I haven't let loose with a rant for a while, so hold on tight. The Australian beef industry is the world champion of own goals and we just keep getting better and better. Last week I had another two audits, one for our feedlot and another EU audit for one property. Add them to the pile of audits we wade through on a monthly basis. I got a corrective action for our feedlot for writing the words "steer" and "heifer" in the description of livestock on the eDec. I should have written, "castrated steer" and "heifer that has not calved". A simple search of any dictionary or even google's AI has worked out that in fact a steer is a castrated male bovine and a heifer has not calved. But here is the awesome kicker! If you go into the swanky LPA site, to write out a eDec, the site & system costing us as levy payers around $27 million a year to maintain, the drop box you can select from for the cattle description, contains only "steer" or "heifer", no sign of castrated steers or heifers that have not calved anywhere to select. Couple that with the observation that I need to go through my entire QA system to change the names of "QA Officers" to "Statement of Attainment holders" because someone thought it sounded fancier to change a name in the standards, I then opened the mail to find my letter informing me that I now need another animal welfare management plan for my grazing operation on top the two we are running for a feedlot and an abattoir just to add to the 470 folders of approved arrangements and QA systems in my office.
I'm about at the end of my rope with an industry intent on hanging itself in plain stupid regulation and cost.
So let's start with the fact that we even have an NFAS (National Feedlot Accreditation System). The largest exporter of grain fed beef in the world, the USA, doesn't have one. I've never met a consumer who gives a damn about how many days an animal has been confined to feed (other than proving they weren't at all!).
So we have LPA, NLIS, NFAS, then EUCAS because apparently the aforementioned programs don't actually work or do what they are meant to do! And after all of that you get to the abattoir where they have to palpate for HGPs in random places & consistently test meat for HGPs and residues, because why (if the hundreds of millions of $$s in producers funds and time had been worth it at all)?
Last year I paid over $60,000 to Ausmeat (our own industry organisation) to strangle me in red tape, I pay almost $16,000 a shot for a week long Federal Department of Ag audit (2 of those a year), $35,000 a month for Government inspectors to watch over us, $500 a week to fly samples to Brisbane, over $30,000 a year in NLIS tags and readers, over $20,000 a year to the State Govt for environmental licenses, $50,000 in software to keep the balls in the air, $120,000 in levies to fund people to dream up more of this BS, and my daughters and I and 3 QAs work stupid hours to try to keep it all running.
All for the privilege of running some cattle, slaughtering them on farm and trying to sell our own beef.
In case anyone was misguided that we did all of this for the betterment of our consumers, have a chat with one, they would really just like their beef to cost less!
So to the Australian beef industry "leaders" forget about talking to Government: you need to solve for red tape internally first otherwise you look like complete hypocrites.
If you want a simple test: here it is:
Do our major competitors do it? No - then scrap it.
Do our major competitors have a simpler system that gives them equivalent access - yes - then adopt it!!
Have we negotiated any preferential market access from it (to clarify - this means no-one should be accessing the market on the same terms with less) - no - then scrap it.
Is it discriminatory to small and medium operators - yes - then scrap it.
We'll have a fair bit of this sorted in under a month!!!
(No doubt I'm in for a bunch more corrective action and bad blood from audit & industry leaders, for the above rant.)
