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?!
If as Murray Arnel at Stock and Land (Fairfax) (May29) reports, NVD’s are not being completed up to 50% of the time then where does that place the LPA program that relies upon NVD’s?
It’s not news that NVD boxes aren’t being ticked and animal breeds aren’t being completed. While NVD’s have become the default transactional document they are by no means mandatory to transact livestock.
And now it seems the claims made by processors and their membership body, MLA, that NVD’s must be completed, is not absolute and agents are working with processors to attempt to get their client vendors to rectify the situation. This then raises another question about whether agents should be working for their client vendors or the processor buyers – who is paying whom for what services here?!
There’s no doubt NVD’s have served a productive purpose over the years. Is it just since MLA and the processors have interferred with the free market that they are buggering up? What do you think?
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