Meeting in Darwin last week before the Meat and Livestock Australia annual meeting, CCA passed a bevy of resolutions, mostly put forward by AgForce Queensland, which if implemented, would herald sweeping changes to the MSA program and the way it is used and identified.

Among the developments:

* Two virtually identical resolutions from NSW and Queensland sought greater promotional and marketing support for MSA on the domestic market, with the view of gaining greater pull-through effect from end-users. All States supported the move.

* Another resolution, unanimously supported by all States, requested investigation into the merit in dropping the MSA name altogether, in favour of the Eating Quality Assurance (EQA) descriptor already used in international markets.

* Other discussion focused on applying MSA science to identify pathways for long-distance transport of livestock, whereby cattle currently outside MSA’s “natural catchment” area limited by time and distance to slaughter within 24 hours, could qualify for grading.

CCA plans to further investigate the implications of removal of the dentition measurement under the AusMeat language, in favour of ossification-based physiological age assessment as used under MSA.

Such a move would overcome the current anomaly where some cattle are being rejected by company grid specifications based on teeth, while being perfectly acceptable under MSA grading.

President, Greg Brown, said CCA would now take its MSA agenda to the domestic marketing task force, on which it was represented.

“We think our arguments will be hard to resist, once we’ve done some one-on-one lobbying with processors and others represented on the task force,” he said.

“We’d would like to see implementation of these initiatives sooner rather than later.”