LEADING speakers from the Australian beef industry featured at a recent a one-day Beef 4 Profit Meating the Market workshop at Mount Compass.
The workshop - an initiative of SA Limousin made possible through funding from Meat & Livestock Australia's More Beef from Pastures program - was designed to educate producers about providing high-quality profitable beef.
Speakers aimed to increase understanding of market specifications and requirements, obtain higher levels of compliance, build awareness and understanding of the Livestock Data Link tool and the MSA Index, improve carcase feedback, and outline pasture-fed beef in SA, and discussed how to meet cattle nutrition requirements.
Under the direction of MLA's value-chain relationship manager Verity Gilbertson, the group of producers and service breeders were given a hands-on experience in using LDL, an MLA initiative to enhance the exchange and utilisation of carcase performance information by businesses within the red meat industry.
LDL allows producers to benchmark the performance of their carcases at a regional, state or national level, and enable the performance of a herd to be compared over time.
When a producer identifies a non-compliance issue, they are then able to link directly to a library of solutions.
An informative session on getting the most out of supplying cattle into the Meat Standards Australia system was presented by MSA trade development officer Jake Phillips.
The MSA supply chain comprises 35,000 producers, 52 processors, 103 brands and 2700 end-users, and Mr Phillips said every state had experienced growth, with a 92.6 per cent compliance rate.
* Full report in Stock Journal, November 20, 2014 issue.
Carla Wiese-Smith
Editor of SmartFarmer magazine.
Editor of SmartFarmer magazine.
