Lamb processors yielding efficiences

Victorian Farmers Federation Sheep Meat Advisory Group member and Southern Prime Lamb Group president Leigh Harry said the industry was moving toward yield payments as lamb continued its ride as the premium red meat product.

"We are seeing more and more business decisions based on breeding values for eye muscle area and meat tenderness traits," Mr Harry said.

"LambPlan and Meat & Livestock Australia are encouraging stud breeders to measure for these traits in different breeds while advising (commercial) producers to use these as a production tool.

"Meat quality and yield will become the most important measures in sheep production as lamb meat continues to be a luxury item."

The owner of Western Farming and Livestock contract business and farm manager of Australian Lamb Company's property and feedlot in Western Victoria, Mr Harry said the promotion of electronic identification tags would enable the yield-based payments because livestock could be traced from the paddock to the plate.

He said this would enable processors to measure meat weight, minus penalties, such as animal health issues or fat trims.

Sheep Solutions principal consultant Geoff Duddy supported Mr Harry's comments but said the move was being driven by processors and would see resistance from farmers.

"It could happen in the next three to five years," Mr Duddy said.

"We are making huge efficiency gains now in the industry with the growing use of genomics and stud breeders targeting eating quality breeding values but implementing (the required infrastructure) at the farm level will be the slow part.

"Studs are getting into genomics and objective testing that is providing a better eating product but it is in the producers' hands to take that next step to implement those genetic benefits on farm."

However, any changes to payments would depend on infrastructure moving from a weighted lot average to being able to trace individual livestock heads. This would be dependent on livestock being eID tagged and processing equipment that can track eID.

Mr Duddy said this would revolutionise current penalty systems that are based on average percentages to a tailored pricing systems.

"It will be a great idea but difficult to implement because processors will need to have all the equipment and robotics which needs to include eID to trace the animal," he said.

"By moving to a yield based payment and robotics, processors can further minimise waste and improve processing efficiencies that will see greater feedback from the processor to the producer about meat yields and animal health."