AACo. has just announced that it’s new CEO will receive $600,000 base salary with incentives that can take it to $1,000,000. See Media Report Here
I think MLA’s CEO, David Palmer receives around $750,000 (+ expenses, of course). How do you compare the worth and/or effectiveness of these employees? Is one worth more than the other?
Who is AACo’s CEO answerable to and how and
who is MLA’s CEO answerable to and how?
As a group listed with the ASX, AACo. must follow strict rules and guidelines on reporting to its shareholders who have invested in the company.
MLA is also a sorporate entity that must follow the rules of ASIC. (That is why only around 2.6% of Aust levy-paying producers voted in the recent MLA AGM but it is still funded by the Fed Govt See Figures here). MLA is a tax-payer funded organisation with those taxes coming from a per head fee on livestock sold (taxes) and Federal Govt funding (from taxpayers). So, the rules followed by MLA are different from those followed by AACo.
AACo. has published the salary of its new CEO. How easy is it to access the salary of MLA’s CEO?
AACO. shareholders will see the salary of their CEO paid from company revenue and his incentives paid from measurable commercial company performance. How is the performance of the MLA’s CEO measured? Is there a component that is also based upon the performance of the MLA. Is it related back to the commercial benefit to its livestock growers?
If so, how is this performance measured?
Presumably MLA is using a different set of figures its media releases that show it has only produced $0.91c per beast over 30 years of spending. See Rural Australia Analysis Here
What do you think?
Please leave your comment below.
Question: If someone can be crippled from eating bad hamburger meat (where most of Australia’s exports to the US end-up), should she be able to locate the livestock from whence it originated? And if so, is this possible? New York Times article
The long and the short of this article is that after being crippled by the E.coli from eating minced meat from the food giant, Cargill, this poor girl attempted to back-track the meat’s pathway. The meat was manufactured from a plethora of ground-up rubbish including some cattle meat and marketed as “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties”. However, because it originated from a variety of animals and by-products, processed by a variety of personnel there was no hope of tracking-down the originating beasts or their ‘home’ properties. (The side issue here is that the ingredients were listed only as “beef”).
The reality is that a cattle ID system such as NLIS or LPA would not and could not have assisted this victim or others following in her eating ‘footsteps’? Perhaps this is one of the reasons America and Japan don’t have a livestock ID system. If they don’t, then how can MLA justify Australian producers paying their levy taxes to fund one here?!
Does this sound familiar? It’s a aged ABC Rural report but may be relevant given the forthcoming MLA vote on livestock taxes/levies.
As reported, “New Zealand lobby group Federated Farmers says wool growers voted against paying levies because they were fed up with wool prices and disenfranchised by the industry.”
“Wool research and development body Meat and Wool New Zealand will get no levies from wool growers, after a vote last week.” Read the ABC Rural report
“Federated Farmers says it’s concerned about the long term future of wool, now no-one is looking after the industry.”
Chairman Hugh Taylor says wool growers are upset with Meat and Wool New Zealand spending money in areas that didn’t help them. Heard that before?!
“I think the vote will take the shackles off [the industry] in some ways,” he says. It’s got to be market-led.
We’re going to get the industry all together and work together for the benefit of the grower.” Hah! If only! Do you see any parallel’s to this vote and that of the forthcoming MLA AGM and vote on Australian cattle taxes/levies?
Gee, who would have thought it! “If the share issue does not happen, Elders will hit the wall on September 30, its debt renegotiation deadline. Receivership will be difficult to avoid”.Clock running down for Elders.
To avoid receivership (in an attempt to renegotiate its debt), apparently Elders is having to savagely slash the value at which it’s offering its shares to large investors. To this extent it has so far pitched shares at, “…61 per cent below market (39c before shares were halted days ago), and a sobering 95 per cent below Elders’ peak price of $2.83 in July 2007, just before the global debt crisis erupted.” (‘The Age’, Malcolm Maiden)
The worrying aspect of this issue would seem to be that as Maiden says, “The institutions believed that Elders’ debt reconstruction deal was priced as if Elders would still be in a fight for its survival after the debt reconstruction and the share issue had put that issue beyond doubt.“
Then if Elders can/does survive to fight another day, can a business like this that depends upon 5.5%(?!) sales commissions and merchandise sales expect to survive in 2009/10+ (especially if it sells down its HiFert shares)?
Additionally, can much value really be added by a centralised administration (ASX listed) group to a large agency network that survives on the personal relationships of its staff/operatives? And if it’s the relationships that count, why aren’t these operatives out working as independents without being tied-down by Head Office? (Perhaps this is cause for wonder about the ability of a lot of Elders employees who think they need a red shirt to get their work). Makes you consider whether some red shirts might be looking to change to a more positive color in the near future.
Agforce is right to advise consumers that they are headed for even higher costs if the fuel rebate is scrapped. Agforce on fuel costs
However, they are stuck between a rock and a hard place, aren’t they as we should be more focussed on the current rip-off by processors and retailers. Australia’s meat is purchased at the lowest cost in the developed World and sold at the highest! Click for the facts
While it’s all very well for MLA to advertise to increase consumption, I would prefer they work on removing the rip-off. It must be difficult for them though when they are representing both producers and the processors ripping them off!
What do you think?
Please leave your comment below.
Chairman of the Australian Beef Association and wool producer, Mr Bellinger has congratulated The Australian Wool Innovation Board (AWI) for giving wool producers some long awaited commonsense, with their decision to continue marketing wool from mulesed sheep past the 2010 deadline.
The message Mr. Bellinger and the ABA have supported is, “If you want wool from unmulesed sheep – then pay for it.’ Read more from ABA here
It seems that Carbon emissions trading is on the way.
The, “Global warming is/isn’t” debate (between environmental scientists and various ‘weather watchers’) seems to have been by-passed by the old-fashioned ‘dirty pollution’ should be cleaned-up-whether-it’s-involved-in Global-warming-or-not perspective.
The Leader of the Coalition was once one of emissions trading’s most vocal supporters so even with allowances, it is highly likely that farms will need to address how they are going to cut emissions – otherwise they will be taxed/charged for their role in ‘Carbon poisoning’. (The primary food production industry can realistically hope for allowances but these may well be tied to proof of emissions decreases as distinct from removal from the ‘program’).
With cattle farms in the spotlight, I guess information on strategies such as dietary supplements to reduce belching, seem the most obvious options.
However, what else can you think of that might assist. Two come immediately to mind:
Gaining credits for the carbon fixing properties of trees on a per farm basis (tree plantations are apparently getting them), and direct sales as distinct from ‘yards based sales to cut down on freight.
What do you think?
Please leave your comment below.
I bet AACo wished it had one of those little gadgets that you whistle to find your keys!
Then they might be able to find the 183,000 cattle Donald Fuller claims are missing ‘ghosts’.
Gee, imagine if we invented a similar tool for the whole Australian cattle industry where we could immediately find where any cattle are. It’d be simple, especially if we made it law to put RFID chips in the ears of all cattle and to register them all on a central database.
There would be all sorts of benefits and little tussles like the one between AACo and Mr Fuller could be solved overnight. (Then, if the cattle existed, AACo and the judge could find against Mr Fuller for defamation and tell him he’s not right about AACo doing ‘interesting’ sales deals ‘off-market’, so to speak, to circumvent full document disclosure about stock numbers – which he says don’t stack up).
(Click to read AACo court case re claim 183,000 cattle ‘missing’ - “The Age”)
Hey! I know, what if NLIS could do this? We could use it instead of our new database gadget. It would also be able to trace cattle for other disease-related reasons.
Unfortunately, as both of these cases require 100% accountability and accuracy, we will unfortunately need to disregard NLIS. i.e. we know from the PWC Audit of NLIS that more stock have gone ‘missing’ from the NLIS dbase since that audit, and if we wanted to rely on it, we would all just be whistling Dixie!
What do you think? Please leave your comment below.
$223 million has supposedly been paid by Australia’s producers and spent by MLA on LPA, Flockcare, Cattlecare, MSA + …… to gain a net industry benefit, over 30 years, of $1.1 billion. (See The Australian article here.)
$1.1 billion is about $0.91c per beast (cattle + sheep currently less than 40million head)! i.e. $1.1 billion ($1.1 thousand million) over 30 years is about $36 million each year. (I wonder how much a head that is when inflation etc is taken into account?)
However, what does this mean if the QA programs affecting meat quality aren’t being used?! (See Some figures on MSA non-usage here).
What benefits have Australia’s producers received from this cost? Let’s hope someone like CEO of MLA, David Palmer or Brad Bellinger, Chair at Australian Beef Association (ABA), can enlighten us.
David Palmer said the program has three quality systems for beef and sheep meat.
It began with beef in 1996, and aimed “to dramatically boost meat-eating quality”. Mr Palmer said it had evolved into a “world-leading quality assurance system from farm to consumer”.
Mr. Palmer states that QA systems have resulted in the consumer benefiting from better eating quality meat.
However, as only a bare proportion of producers use the meat quality QA programs (none use MSA in Victoria, apparently!), Australia’s farmers must be improving their meat without MLA’s programs – something Mr. Palmer didn’t clarify. Which means the programs can’t be accounting for the improved eating quality, which means producers are paying for QA programs that cost them via their MLA taxes (levy) but don’t achieve anything.
And let’s not forget that it has been proven time and again that producers aren’t receiving any additional income from this $223 million cost either. So, if this is the case, what is happening to the supposed magnificence of the $0.91c per beast?!
Wool buyers aren’t able to sell mulesed wool to fabric suppliers of large garment makers because consumers just won’t buy such product. This could be considered as a type of QA requirement on wool producers. In fact, it is probably the most potent direct QA requirement we have seen.
For more see this article or the previous Rural Australia mulesing article.
At first glance, this type of wool QA might seem to be relevant to the MSA and LPA QA contraints MLA has attempted to foist on meat producers for so many years. However, anti-mulesing is being actively promoted by consumers whereas meat QA is not being activately sought by consumers.
After many years of MLA promotion only about 4.8% of meat killed in 2007 was MSA.(If around 600,000 head are MSA and the total market kill is currently around 13million – The Weekly Times Nov 3, 2008) This leaves around 95% non-MSA. So, the vast majority of meat being consumed is non-MSA.
In fact, MLA recently stated (The Weekly Times Nov 3, 2008) that Australian meat exports are expected to hold-up because of the strong $US dollar. Where does MSA fit here? Probably in the same dark place as NLIS i.e. No country except Australia even talking about it now – despite MLA’s best efforts to promote it internationally (using producer funds, of course!)
Cattle Care and Flock Care failed and Victorians have led the pack in just jacking-up and saying “No” to MSA totally, apparently!
These figures show that in reality, QA is actually wasting valuable producer funds. If consumers want it, don’t worry, like mulesing, they’ll let us know.
CAAB is happily extending its MSA-backed (and presumably MLA sponsored) program and good luck to it. However, it is a niche branded product that doesn’t supply even a lion cub’s share of the market, let alone a lion’s share! If groups like CAAB require MSA then those producers wishing to participate are free to do so. We need to support enterprises like CAAB, however, it’s just not fair that those producers not wishing to do supply to CAAB should have to pay MLA to manage MSA systems for niche brands like CAAB.
LPA is the last QA vestige left for MLA (and its cohort processors) and it only surives because it (illegally?)forces producers to pay MLA to use an NVD form they had already been using from a different source for several years anyway.
So, is mulesing QA analagous to that for meat? I don’t think so!
What do you think?
Please leave your comment below?
