In this contributed item, the Australian Beef Association provides opinion about the different industry views that have emerged about the adoption of DEXA objective carcase measurement technology, and whether MLA has stepped beyond its charter in proposing its adventurous Project 150 adoption model 

THE recent press coverage regarding differences of opinion between MLA cattle producers and AMPC over the MLA DEXA yield grading project rollout underscores the long held concern among many red meat industry players about the current organisational structure of their industry.

According to the Red Meat Industry MOU and MLA brochures they are a service provider in the red meat industry and not an industry representative body or lobby group. MLA receive levy funds from cattle producers, sheep producers, lot feeders and meat processors.

When MLA announced the DEXA rollout in November, it talked about having in principle support from Barnaby Joyce and made no mention of a business plan. Now that AMPC and AMIC have come out saying they are employing their own consultants to review the viability of DEXA, it suddenly appears that MLA does have its own business plan.

I suspect that levy payers throughout the land would like to see this business plan and who won the contract for this plan as well as the tender process that was employed by MLA when they commissioned the business plan.  In commenting on the plan by processors to pay a well-known consultancy group to have a good look at DEXA – MLA came out and said they were bound by the rules to call for tenders.

The real issue is that MLA is meant to be responding to the direction and instructions from the levy payers that fund it. Yet it would appear that the processor levy funded body, AMPC, who, although it is not clear, are presumably funding this program jointly with Cattle Producers, are not happy with the proposed DEXA rollout and want to carry out their own independent review.

If processor levies have not been used by MLA to fund the DEXA development, the story is even worse. Why is MLA spending cattle producers’ levies to produce a DEXA solution to beef grading and yield measurement in abattoirs if the processors are not on side?

In 2016 MLA received $115 million in transaction levies, together with $46.4 million in Commonwealth matching R&D contributions and with other income had access to over $203 million to apply to operating activities.

This sort of money gives MLA incredible power over consultants and people writing reports, it seems there could be a danger that anybody writing a report that was critical of the MLA may be concerned that they won’t get any work from the MLA in the future.

Board selection process

When it comes to MLA board member elections, it seems most occasions there are around 150 applicants for this high profile board. The MLA staff shortlist applicants and then we have a selection panel that does the final selection.  If two vacancies exist at the AGM, members have the two selected candidates to vote on. People applying for the selection panel are selected by popular vote at the AGM, however the chair of the MLA board probably has enough votes to outvote a big percentage of producers, therefore the people on the selection panel could potentially be chosen by the MLA board.

It has often been said that no change to our red meat industry organisational structures  is not an option, and producers who do most of the paying have too little of the say.

Processors have a system in place where they have their own service company which gives MLA work for R&D, but refuses to pay towards any marketing. Surely producers could develop their own system along the lines of the processors system whereby producers have real effective control over the expenditure of their own levies and they can choose what they are going to fund and how much they will put towards each project.

As it stands now, cashed-strapped CCA has to bow and scrape to the MLA  for consultancy contracts to earn about $750,000 a year to help it fund its operations Consultancy contracts don’t seem to be let out by MLA through a tender process?  This of course makes it almost impossible for CCA to control and direct MLA on behalf of grassfed cattle producers, as it is meant to do under the current red meat industry structure.

The time has surely now come for the Government and grassfed cattle producers to get together and bring about the organisational changes needed to ensure that cattle producers have an effective sustainably-funded representative body to manage and direct the expenditure of the considerable sums of levy moneys paid by them to industry bodies each year.