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.
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?!
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?!
Do you have an opinion on MLA telling the World that MSA and its QA ‘mates’ (Cattle care, Flock care, NLIS, LPA etc) are World best practice and the rest of the World needs to get on board?
Wouldn’t you think they should be focussed on Australia’s producers getting better prices and saving on costs rather than increasing processing and retail margins? (Surely they wouldn’t be more interested in selling licences to these programs World-wide than looking after their levy-paying producers?)
Here is a list of the weekly World beef price table from the Irish Farmers Journal (which some regard as ‘ one of the best in the World’) Sourced from John Carter’s article Nov 08 (see below).
In Euros the dressed weight prices were as follows UK 3.56
Italy 3.46
Netherlands 3.35
Germany 3.30
France 3.19
Uruguay 2.51
US 2.46
Brazil 1.83 Australia 1.57
Argentina on 1.32 (which is politically price-capped)
“Why, when we are paying the highest levies and using the most expensive QA and trace-back systems in the World are we getting the lowest true prices in the developed world?”– John Carter.
John also asks, “Is our ‘Best beef in the World’, really the worst in the developed world? Must we face the fact that we produce a third world product? Is it possible that we have been led by idiots who can’t see beyond their ivory tower?”
We are certainly being rorted by our supermarket duopoly — since 2000 when we moved from three to two supermarket chains, while the sale yard price of cattle has remained static, the combined retail/wholesale margin has exploded by 56%. Both producers and consumers are being ripped off. Producers now receive 28% of the consumer dollar and falling whilst the USA, UK and NZ receive between 45% and 49%. Click here for more on this story
This has been happening on MLA’s watch, so what is their response ? How are they directly saving producers $money and increasing our prices?
Given that MLA is supposedly working in your best interests as a producer, have the programs they have introduced (MSA, NLIS, Breed plan, Cattle Care, Flock Care, LPA etc) assisted you?
What do you think? Please send this blog to a friend and leave your comment below.
Sounds ironic, don’t you think? MLA has apparently claimed it is giving itself (its Board and senior executives), salary increases because NLIS is so successful.
Cop that!
A salary increase justified by a severe impost on producers (and agents) that is paid for by producers and benefits processors and retailers!
The MLA already receives a triple tax from producers: 1. The increased per head ‘levy’ tax 2. LPA tax to use the industry’s standard NVD form. 3. Federal Govt. co-funding from ‘Normal’ government farm taxes to boot!
(So, despite the fact that it is an independent corporation, MLA is actually funded primarily from taxes and would have very little revenue without taxes. Not much free market economics going-on there! ) However, it does seem a tad strange, don’t you think, that it can have the gaul to increase its salary based upon the spending of producer’s taxes. i.e. “We have spent your taxes so well, we deserve an increase in salary”.
One wonder whether they will then have the gaul to increase the taxes (levies) again in order to pay for the salary increases. Now that would be a truly vicious cycle.
If we are to take other large corporations as an example, we would expect to see peer group benchmarks and performance hurdles before salary increases would even be mentioned. As it stands, it seems there are no benchmarks on NLIS and all we have are: 1. PWC audit that showed ‘black’ holes in NLIS 2. Producer and agent displeasure with the NLIS 3. No international requirement for NLIS 4. No international implementation of NLIS
If this is the case, where is the case for MLA salary increases based upon the success of NLIS? In 2008 it should no longer be possible to say something is so without proof.
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”.
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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