Australian Lot Feeders Association life member and former president (1992-1995), Kev Roberts, rose during Meat & Livestock Australia’s 25th annual general meeting in Bendigo to draw attention to the achievements of the Meat Standards Australia (MSA) red meat eating quality program over the past 25 years, pointing out that more than 50 percent of carcases today are graded MSA.

Kev Roberts addresses the 2023 MLA AGM.

Mr Roberts served on the ALFA Council for 19 years and was the inaugural chair of the National Feedlot Accreditation Scheme.

“Under your leadership and the board that you have had over the previous times, I think we as producers we need to be very grateful for your efforts in pretty tough times,” Mr Roberts said.

“I am very familiar with the MSA program, I happened to be about when it was being formed, I am very proud to see where it has got to, also very proud that I was part of change in that where the processors in the early days were not going to adopt it, or not adopt it as well as we wanted.

“And Jason (Strong) would remember we had some pretty hard old heads to soften up to get it to where it is today.

“And it is great to see today that more than 50pc of carcases are graded MSA.”

As a producer and now a seedstock producer, he said he was delighted to see “that quality is the driving force of our industry”.

Mr Roberts also urged the board to prioritise traceability standards moving forward.

“Finally, I think it is terribly terribly important, again I am very familiar with all the traceability programs that have been developed over the last numbers of years.

“I think that we need to hold those traceabilty standards and operations almost in the whole

“Every decision you make as a board needs to be getting not only just in product development but to make sure we keep our industry way up there as being reliable as a supplier and a safe supplier.

“So thank you to Alan and everyone on the board.”