KEY industry and government bodies have hit back at criticism raised by the Australian Beef Association (ABA) over the performance of the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) last week.
ABA commissioned an independent report into the efficacy of NLIS, based on evidence supplied on 17 ABA member properties of various sizes, covering about 57,000 radio-frequency identification (RFID) devices in four States.
Based on the report’s findings, it attacked NLIS, claiming more than 20 per cent of cattle recorded on the database (live and slaughtered) did not have lifetime traceability.
As a result, NLIS could not be relied on for disease control nor for market access advantages.
The ABA insisted the properties involved in the survey did not represent a biased sample, because of its “large sample size and homogeneous nature”.
Of the claimed 34pc of cattle slaughtered to date that did not have lifetime traceability, orange tags represented 18.4pc, and white tags 16.1pc, ABA claimed.
It also suggested total lost traceability of at least 22.3pc, increasing over time.
ABA chairman, Brad Bellinger, said the results showed that thousands of cattle were slipping through a flawed system, which could compromise Australia’s disease response.
He also claimed the competitive advantage in marketing Australian meat had failed to materialise.
“The trouble is there are a lot of cattle being moved and they aren’t being properly recorded to the database and there are human error problems with the database,” he said.
ABA’s audit was sparked as a result of considerable discrepancies between members’ cattle inventories, and what was recorded against their property identification code (PIC) on the database, Mr Bellinger said.
Critics of the report this week pointed out that many of the orange (post-breeder) tagged cattle flagged without lifetime traceability would always have been outside the system - bought-in cattle tagged in the early introduction phases.
Safemeat, the partnership between all key stakeholders in the Australian meat and livestock industry and State and Federal governments condemned the report as inaccurate and misleading.
It identified a series of flaws in the methodology, arguments and statistics put forward.
Firstly, while ABA’s report dealt with lifetime traceability (LT) of tags, this had no impact in practical traceability performance, Safemeat spokesman, Allan Bloxsom said.
“Unfortunately the loss of lifetime LT could be very confusing to anybody that picks up that document. We know that loss of LT on a national average is around seven to eight per cent – nothing like the 34.5pc claimed in the report,” he said.
“For example, an animal may have its property of birth tag applied, miss a property-to-property movement being recorded (which was only required under legislation in most States since 2006), and then be recorded as transferred into a feedlot and finally recorded as slaughtered.
“Yet while that animal could be easily traced, it would appear as having lost its LT status.”
Safemeat also refuted claims the industry was not able to rely on NLIS in the event of a disease outbreak.
“This is not supported by any of the trials and simulations conducted by Federal and State Governments, such as the Cowcatcher 1 and Cowcatcher 2 national disease simulations, nor by the actual disease tracing that had been conducted by State Governments following anthrax detections,” Mr Bloxsom said.
Australian Livestock and Property Agents Association chief executive, Andy Madigan, said many of the problems ABA highlighted were a result of producers not recording property-to-property movements.
“If they have lost traceability it is due in great part to the producers not doing their bit by responsibly transferring stock onto their PIC,” he said.
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