AFTER years of silence a small article in MLA's weekly news roundup, Friday Feedback, confirms that steps are finally under way to progress the recommendations for the livestock component of the Australian Beef Language Review White Paper presented to industry back in January 2016.
It was 2014 at the depth of low cattle prices when peak councils commissioned the White Paper review.
The working party went to great lengths to establish solid foundations for the wider technical recommendations it made, including 12 months of public submissions, in-depth review for preparation of 13 background technical papers and extensive industry consultation.
Not unexpectedly the principal recommendations focused on beef and top of the list was a new Eating Quality Graded cipher as an alternative to dentition-based ciphers, which would give MSA brand owners the option to pack and label beef according to consumer eating quality outcomes.
But when the working group came to livestock, they discovered that this element of the overall beef language had been drifting directionless since AUS-MEAT relinquished responsibility for its oversight in 1998.
Rod Polkinghorne authored the background technical paper titled Appendix C: The Australian Bovine Livestock Language.
This 51-page document served to illustrate just how complex a task the livestock component represented and unlike the specific, technical recommendations made for beef, the principal recommendation for livestock was to form yet another expert group to conduct yet another review.
To a cynic, this looked more like a recommendation to rebury it rather than reinvigorate it.
Perhaps AUS-MEAT had the right idea back in 1998. After all, 18 years had since rolled by with not a flicker of interest from industry let alone an offer to pick it up and run with it.
It took peak councils 15 months to consider the report and reach some consensus on the White Paper's 46 recommendations.
While conceived in 2014 when drought and disproportionately low cattle prices prevailed, the review had the misfortune of being presented to industry in January 2016 at a time of unrivalled price recovery so perhaps it was understandable that the whole matter seemed to lose urgency and fall from consciousness.
In April 2017, peak councils finally agreed to the recommendation for an expert-group review of the livestock language and directed MLA to coordinate commencement of the work.
Five months later in August 2017, adoption of the recommended EQG cipher was announced but no word on progress of the livestock expert group, leaving suspicion that it had effectively fallen through the cracks.
That silence continued until last Friday.
MLA's Sarah Strachan, who recently moved from MSA program manager to group manager-adoption and commercialisation, has kindly provided some background information which helps to fill in the gap.
It appears there was a relatively recent Expression of Interest process overseen by Red Meat Advisory Council to select eight members for a Livestock Language Review Expert Group.
The group represents cattle production, processing and trading sectors and is facilitated and chaired by MLA.
It has step-wise project objectives and has already completed the first stage.
This was to deliver a comprehensive desktop assessment and mapping of the terms and systems used across the industry globally to describe bovine livestock attributes.
Stage two now under way involves analysis of that mapping.
From this will emerge a set of draft recommended standards, guidelines and glossary for a Bovine Livestock Language.
The expert group will then consult with industry organisations that use livestock descriptors, including seedstock breeders, finishing producers, agents, live exporters and processors, to gather feedback.
From Friday's announcement it would seem the second stage analysis and development of draft standards will not take long as the consultation phase is expected to start soon.
Likewise, conclusion of the whole matter seems confidently assured.
In Ms Strachan's words, "The final outcome is likely to be a recommended National Livestock Language Standard presented to the Australian Meat Industry Language and Standards Committee."
Given the history of this issue, the problems identified in the earlier background technical paper and a number of others not identified, this would be a remarkable achievement.
Equally remarkable will be getting the livestock language back into AUS-MEAT's orbit of influence as intimated in the reference to AMILSC above.
On that point Ms Strachan provided an interesting perspective.
She pointed out that AMILSC is the custodian of many industry standards including standards for programs such as MSA while MLA actually owns and updates the MSA standards.
She said it was proposed that AMILSC would be the custodian of any National Livestock Language Standards that may result from the project but ownership of reviewing and updating them over time was still to be determined.
Southern rates on the rise
IT was business as usual for southern markets on Monday with their different Labour Day holiday dates.
A combination of rain across the supply area and the usual contraction in heavy steer and bullock numbers at this time of year saw a dearer market at Wagga.
With no bullocks to quote, the handful of heavy steers recorded a 44c/kg hike to a 364c average and 380c top.
A good sample of heavy cows climbed well back into the 300c/kg range to average 11c dearer at 296c.
Noting that southern cows are back to the equivalent of 600c/kg DW on the ground, one Qld processor I spoke to suggested it will be no time before the southerners are back up in the northern markets.
Southern NSW grid rates saw a 20c adjustment to ox prices last week bringing 4-tooths to 565c/kg but heavy cows remained unchanged at 510c.
South-east Qld grid rates also moved up 20c taking for 4-tooth ox to 570c/kg. Heavy cows remain unchanged at 490c.
Concern about coronavirus getting into the bigger beef sheds is still running at a high level and the recent outbreak in a Melbourne small-stock shed as well as relaxation of social distancing rules by state governments has processors on edge.