AUSTRALIA'S image as a producer of clean, green and safe meat needs to be protected, writes ATHOL ECONOMOU
Australia's clean and green image is the envy of the meat exporting world.
This image is no accident.
It's the result of decades of good animal health and food safety policy and its gut-busting and expensive implementation by Australian beef producers.
This image belongs to Australian farmers. They earned it by eradicating tuberculosis, brucellosis, anthrax, scrapie, blue tongue and in the case of BSE or mad cow disease, by the stringent implementation of feeding codes that ensured this deadly disease did not occur in Australia.
The clean and green image is a producer asset. It is worth billions. It does not belong to politicians and bureaucrats. It is not theirs to give away.
The commercial reality is that we are 100 per cent dependent on consumers in Australia, Japan, the US and South Korea.
Did the Cattle Council, Red Meat Advisory Council or National Farmers' Federation ask them if they wanted Australia to lower its food safety standards?
Meat and Livestock Australia doesn't need to do a survey.
Every single consumer, from mums and dads shopping for the family to food service operators, would answer no!
So why are the Federal Government and agri-politicians so intent on giving away this hard-earned marketing advantage?
The answer seems to be that US beef bureaucrats and trade lawyers asked them to let US beef into Australia and threatened legal action if they didn't.
US beef is one of the most subsidised meat products in the world. The US threat is blatant hypocrisy. Yet Australian politicians chose to sell-out beef producers and millions of consumers in the face of this veiled threat.
The beef trade is a global business. When Minister Burke deferred his decision to allow imports in early March, the US Ambassador immediately made a personal protest to the Minister. This issue is about far more than pre-2004 annual imports of 30 tonnes of US beef.
Animal health and food safety standards protect the interests of consumers and reward producers who make a quality product. But these standards impede the activities of traders whose objective is to maximise margins and short-term profits.
Dismantling Australia's BSE standards is just another step towards undermining global animal health and food safety standards.
It gives global traders a greater pool of cheap cattle and greater market access.
Small differences in supply make big differences in price for a perishable product.
Meat traders such as the Brazil-based JBS (the equal biggest US processor, biggest US lot feeder and processor of about 30 per cent of the Australian kill) and local monopolies, including Coles and Woolworths (50 per cent of retail sales) stand to make a fortune.
If Australia was to import beef from countries with a history of BSE, it would be reasonable to expect Japan and South Korea would apply the same requirements on Australia as they currently apply to the US, that is, beef must be derived from cattle under 20 months of age.
Remember, the US has only had one BSE infected animal, imported from Canada.
Most of the 450,000 tonnes of beef currently purchased by Japan and South Korea from Australia is derived from cattle more than 20 month of age.
The National Livestock Identification System does not provide proof of age.
And Australia, unlike the US, does not have certified graders who can age carcasses by ossification.
The proposed change to the BSE rules is a dangerous and risky initiative. At best, the outcome will be a steady decline in Australian cattle prices.
But a real or perceived risk from BSE, in the short or long term, will lock Australia out of North Asia for a decade, with catastrophic consequences for farming families.
Lowering food safety standards, to appease multinational meat traders, is just another step in the race to the bottom.
- Athol Economou is the Victorian director of Australian Beef Association
