Meat Standards Australia (MSA) has been around for some time now, and many producers have taken it on board.
In fact, more than 1300 Victorian producers have consigned cattle to the MSA program, and Barry Holland, Sale, was placed in the top 100 Victorian producers for the 2016-2017 financial period.
This is no mean feat, as Australia wide there has been 6.3 million cattle over the past two financial years.
In order to achieve this honour Barry Holland’s animals had to meet outstanding compliance rates to MSA specifications, as well as high eating quality performance, again under MSA guidelines.
Barry Holland was proud to display his award certificate at a recent Sale store cattle market, and rightly so. Obviously, Barry is doing everything right to receive this award.
Breeding, or purchasing the right cattle to start with will get a producer started.
If you are breeding, then fattening your own cattle, you have the best control of any outcome.
If you are a fattener, and rely on buying the right cattle, it is very important to know everything about the cattle before purchasing.
To this end, it was mentioned to me, last week, that when purchasing cattle from a store sale, information is golden.
One agent has said the pen cards need to display all relevant information, which includes any antibiotic status.
This information not only assists MSA grading, but equally, producers supplying steers, or bullocks, to a grass assured program, also require this knowledge.
Pre-sale catalogues are important here, but in the heat of a sale, pen cards can supply all of the required information.
Now, this leads into another topic. Bio-security, and when will this debacle of accreditation become mandatory for processors, and will it achieve more money for the producer.
I had a call from a producer, Monday morning, who wanted some clarification to fill out the forms.
More importantly, he was not sure where to send it to.
Returning the form is not required, I told him, just fill it out and put it in the draw for future reference if, and when, an auditor calls and says they are coming.
How can this experience possibly promote excellence? Both within and out of the industry, but more importantly to our customers.
Since writing Prime Talk in last week’s Stock & Land, I have had a number of producers, livestock carriers, and agents, express their annoyance at the new biosecurity laws.
First, no one can declare them bio-secure, but they say they have done the best they could, which the adage used by MLA presenters when attending producer and agent forums recently.
My question is, will doing the best you can promote excellence in our industry?
Second, will doing an audit whenever possible, but potentially not for three or more years, ever promote excellence to our customers
Whether you like this new encumbrance on producers, or not, we are told we have to fill out the form, or we could loose our PIC number.
As indicated in last week’s Prime Talk, the outbreak of Jhone’s Disease (JD) in Queensland brought on this issue, and does JD impact meat quality? No, it does not. Does it affect human health? No, it does not.
Lets get it right!
