Use ESCAS for edge: Keogh

At the LIVEX forum held in Melbourne, Australian Farm Institute director Mick Keogh said the imposition of the federal government’s Exporter Supply Chain Assurance Scheme (ESCAS) - implemented as a consequence of the 2011 suspension on live cattle exports to Indonesia – could position the country as the leader in animal welfare standards against the 100 competing nations.

The increase in industry regulation has been widely criticised by industry people for the bureaucratic cost which has made little difference to animal welfare outcomes. However once improved, Mr Keogh said ESCAS could provide opportunities to target higher margin markets.

“The community expectations and the standards applied do impose additional costs on us, so the real challenge is to turn them into advantages and market differentiations,” Mr Keogh said.

“If we can find markets where those extra costs and standards around us turn into something consumers in those markets value, then that is where the opportunities lie.

“The growth in demand for livestock globally is creating a huge amount of opportunities – the challenge for Australia is to identify which markets are the most viable as we won’t be able to service them all.”

He said the focus should be promoting Australia’s food safety, animal health and welfare standards and leading genetics, to generate extra value.

“It is not as if a country like Australia can sit back and say ‘let it roll on’, it is an opportunity wrapped in a pack of competition, the challenge will be how well we address those issues of competition and position Australia and Australian products in those sorts of markets,” he said.

Mr Keogh said global demand for animal protein was growing at a significant rate with developing countries trade having a spectacular impact on Australia’s poultry and pork industry.

“Red meat is certainly a part of that growth story,” he said.

“World population is about 7 billion and projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, and another billion on the planet in the next 15 years.

“The significance of the growth isn’t just in the number of people and numbers of mouths but in the trajectory of dietary changes.

“The developing countries are where the significant growth is occurring as their diets move away from carbohydrate diets to a more western diet where one third of our diet is animal proteins.”

Mr Keogh said since 2001 food prices had bucked the historically flat or downward trend of food prices reflecting the change in demand for Australia’s meat and livestock.

“The world’s meat production is responding to that change ... the biggest growth is in fact pig and chicken meat that is the dominant source of consumption but we have also seen growth in beef, less so in sheep meats,” he said.

ESCAS regulates Australian exporters on the treatment and slaughter of animals in foreign countries and was implemented following public pressure on the government to react to the controversial 2011 broadcast of cruelly treated Australian cattle in Indonesian abattoirs.