Photo: RodeoHouston Facebook

WITH Beef Central’s study tour of the world’s largest cattle producing country scheduled in just over three months, it is worth taking a look at why one meat Australian industry leader is an organiser of the event.

Tickets are still open for the tour, which is starting in Chicago and finishing in Houston in February next year – with plenty of interest already being shown across the supply chain. Run in conjunction Quadrant Ag tours, beef industry identity Ross Keane will be leading the tour through the heart of beef producing country.

The Houston Livestock Show is the finishing event and most likely the largest of its kind in the world. Over three weeks it hosts about 2.4 million people and 7,000 head of cattle of all breeds in the fourth largest city of the United States.

The show is flanked by the International Livestock Congress, an education-focused conference that prides itself on being separate from politics and focused on the issues of industry.

“When you come to ILC, you take your political hat off and leave it the door,” one attendee told Beef Central at last year’s event.

Meat & Livestock Australia general manager Jason Strong has been attending the ILC for about 20 years and currently sits on the organising committee. He said the independence and apolitical nature of the event was one of its main attractions.

Jason Strong

“It tries really hard to identify the key issues of the livestock sector and find ways of attracting some of the best speakers in the world to talk about them and find ways to manage them,” Mr Strong said.

“Over the years the ILC group has been quite influential on issues, particularly in the US. For example, they had some big issues with salmonella and how that was categorised and managed and there was a commission from the ILC, which had a significant impact on our issues.

“It is a very well-connected group of people and very representative across the sector from commercial, education, research and development. You build an incredibly valuable network of connections through the people that organise and attend the event.”

US cattle industry important to Australia

The tour is also heading to some of the Australian meat industry’s big customers, including the Chicago headquarters of McDonald’s.

Mr Strong said looking the US meat industry has been a large and consistent market for Australia for many years.

“America has been either our number one, two or three market for the past 40 years and this year is incredibly important for us because it is a big importer,” he said.

“The type of product we are sending in there is shifting too – we are sending more high quality and high value produce. While trimmings are still a big volume of our supply, we are big suppliers into their growing grassfed sector and we are supplying more grainfed product – particularly through those established supply chains.”

Mr Strong said the US was also important to Australia in-terms of global market dynamics. He said with the country being in drought and mass herd liquidation phase in recent years, it has been competing hard in some of Australia’s key markets – a situation that is changing.

“When you see the projects of US production, very quickly there is a reduction in the number of animals being processed, increasing the amount of product being imported and decreasing the amount being exported,” he said.

“So, the amount of US product coming in to compete with us in our key markets like Japan, Korea and Europe are going to be less.

“One of the reasons I have attended over the years is that different perspective you get on those important market dynamics.”

Houston’s focus on education

Between the ILC and Houston Livestock Show, millions of dollars are raised for agricultural education each year. The stock show has committed more than $22.5m to education this year.

One of the most well-known forms of educational fundraising is the led-steer auction, which in 2022 saw the winning junior market steer earn US$1m.

“The educational component is a massive commitment from the Houston Livestock Show,” Mr Strong said.

“You might look at a livestock show and ‘why would you want to go and watch a bunch of people leading cattle around?’ Cattle is part of it, but you have 2.4 million people through the gates from a wide cross-section of the community.”

• For more information on the tour click here