Who is spreading the upsetting and costly myth that NVD’s are law? Does anyone have a vested interest in such misleading and deceitful promotion?
We all know that NVD’s are a tool owned by the Industry (and that is the groups who got together and invented and implemented it in the first instance – The Agents Association, Cattle Council, Sheep Council, Safemeat, AQIS, etc etc – Notably, MLA was not a party to this!)
The NVD has since been hijacked by MLA’s LPA program as a Trojan Horse for their replacement for CattleCare and FlockCare, but in reality an NVD is only required if requested by the buyer. It only becomes subject to The Law and DPI once signed as it then acts in effect as a Statutory Declaration.
This should be cleaned-up with a letter posted to all participants stating the facts i.e. An NVD is only required if a vendor wishes to present their stock for sale with an NVD. And this may be dependent upon the wishes of their prospective buyer.
Whether or not a vendor wishes to participate in MLA’s LPA QA program and use their LPA stamped NVD’s is a matter for outside the selling ring. It has no bearing on the fact that NVD’s can theoretically be written on a piece of old tin (without an MLA LPA stamp) and still be OK (The buyer might take issue with this but legally there is no problem).
This should then solve the growing friction between ‘yards operators, DPI reps and agents who are all being fed the wrong information by their respective associations and managers.
Get it? Whether producers and buyers use NVD’s is up to them and no-one else.
Here’s another angle too
Article on flawed NVD’s
What do you think?
Please leave your comments below.
Thank God that Agriculture Minister Tony Burke has personally initiated action to keep foreign beef at risk of BSE off Australian shelves. However, there is a strange stench in this issue. While the Australian Beef Association has been very loud in its lobbying against the BSE at risk imports, MLA has been very quiet and Cattle Council has for some reason seemingly been complicit in supporting the foreign BSE at risk imports.
It easy to understand how the public could run scared from beef due to the perceived risk of imported beef bringing BSE into Australia. After-all, look what ‘Mad cow’ did to the UK and Canada a few years back!
But with Australia’s producers as the primary source of Meat & Livestock Australia and Cattle Council funding, the question has to be asked as to why these groups haven’t been more vocal in their concerns about this issue. Surely they haven’t rolled-over to Government pressure because livestock levies go directly to the Government’s Consolidated Revenue (as tax revenue), who then funds MLA et al. That would make sense in so many ways for so many issues over the years, wouldn’t it! However, perhaps MLA thought letting-in BSE at risk meat would be a great way to push their NLIS and LPA programs around the World to countries wishing to export meat to Australia! Unfortunately for them even Minister Burke has now realized that not only do these programs not work within Australia but the rest of the World has absolutely no interest in them – with President Obama recently removing NLIS from their programs!
It is a reasonable decision for Minister Burke to put-off any possible importation of beef for at least two years as protocols for the importation of beef are developed. However, let’s hope MLA and Cattle Council can get together and support the Australian Beef Association’s efforts in protecting all Australians after that 2 year period has transpired, especially their enforced tax-paying constituents/members.
What do you think?
Please leave your comment(s) below.
There was tremendous opposition from US farmers and ranchers, particularly cattle producers.
Where does this now place NLIS’ with one of its base tenets being to provide Australian beef with increased export leverage? Japan and Korea have already illustrated over several years that they don’t require nor pay a premium for Australian NLIS beef. And US beef is not being hindered in its competition with Australian beef within these markets.
Does this really beg the question as to whether Australian farmers can look forward to the near future when their paid employees at MLA and in Government, finally realise that NLIS is now just a cost impost on Australian farmers – in terms of time and money. Not only are there data holes big enough to drive hundreds of B-Doubles laden with stock through, but en masse it just doesn’t provide any value. The NVD has been shown to work well while NLIS in theory sounded OK but just isn’t practical – apart from the huge expense. If processors and branded-beef labels want it, then as with QA systems e.g. LPA, commercial and fair sense says they, as the user, should pay.
What do you think? Please leave your comment below.
This view pretty well sums-up the perception of NLIS from many producers who believe they are funding a scheme flawed in theory and practice.
The National Livestock Identification Scheme more resembles a gauze jug than the failed Quarantine and Inspection Service and should immediately be abandoned in favour of the tail tag system.
Early 2004 I examined the Impact Statement and explained to Michael Beer, N.S.W. D.P.I. how and why it was completely undeliverable. For four years I have been providing details of this fiasco to State and Federal Polititions and their bureauracies. They too, seem to be unable and unwilling to comprehend the Scheme is simply nonsense based on fantasy, and will work wonderfully well so long as there is nothing like Equine Influenza.
Michael Beer recently reported in “The Land” that the subsidy to purchase scanners would discontinue, 794 producers had taken advantage of the offer. There are well over 70,000 Property Identification Codes in N.S.W. Before the Federal election, former Minister McGauran promised $15 million to fix N.L.I.S. which according to some “trumped up” exercise was almost perfect. When Labor won the election this money evaporated and nil allocation in latest budget. Hardly Government support, while producers are being slugged hundreds of million of dollars in compliance costs and wasted levy money.
I appreciate Tony Burke has more pressing problems than a Scheme with no purpose and no tangible results but hope he soon gets around to a serious inquiry into this fraud.
The database is a shambles and the credibility of M.L.A. is in tatters.
I am not so kind as my great little mate the Ooomanakker bird, who recently broke down and
wept, then prayed; “Father forgive them for they know not what they do”.
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?!
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
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?
