News

LPA’s producer assessment project delayed until later this year

Beef Central, 16/01/2017
PLANS to require producers to complete an assessment as part of their Livestock Production Assurance re-accreditation from January 1 are on hold, as the red meat industry’s integrity system is ‘streamlined and strengthened.’
Livestock Production Assurance advisory committee chair Kevin Roberts says the online assessment is part of a broader strategy to strengthen the industry’s LPA, National Vendor Declaration and National Livestock Identification System integrity programs.

Hard copy NVDs like this example could start to be replaced by an electronic version before mid-year

“We had intended for the required assessment to begin from January 1, however industry made a decision late last year to delay implementation until LPA has been transitioned successfully to MLA’s new Integrity and Information Systems Company,” Mr Roberts said.

Improved integration of industry’s integrity system was one of the key recommendations from the SafeMeat Initiatives Review, which concluded in November 2015.

Through the review, industry determined that a single organisation should be given the responsibility for managing the integrity programs in order to improve efficiency in their delivery. This includes the transfer of the LPA program from AusMeat to MLA’s new Integrity and Information Systems Company (formally NLIS Ltd).

LPA’s proposed producer assessment was first discussed in this Beef Central article published in October last year.

Mr Roberts said industry remained committed to strengthening the LPA system which reinforces livestock producers’ promise that Australian red meat is safe to eat, and helps secure vital access to more than 100 markets across the world.

“But we want to get it right, and to make it easy for the producer, so we have delayed this particular step until later in 2017,” he said.

Chief Executive of MLA’s Integrity and Information Systems Company, Dr Jane Weatherley, said the assessment was an essential next step to ensure every red meat producer fully understood their food safety responsibilities and the crucial role they have to play in maintaining Australia’s market access.

The assessment has been developed to be completed on-line to ensure the process is as efficient as possible for producers to complete and easy to use.

“Producers will be communicated with directly, once all transition arrangements are in place,” Dr Weatherley said.

Producers seeking LPA accreditation for the first time are still required to complete the online assessment, and all producers are encouraged to work through LPA Learning at any time to test their own knowledge of food safety requirements.

 

Source: LPA

Leave a Reply to Eion McAllister Cancel Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Your comment will not appear until it has been moderated.
Contributions that contravene our Comments Policy will not be published.

Comments

  1. Geoffrey Beere, 18/01/2017

    Try not to compete on price in the Indonesian market place, warm versus frozen. Previous attempts at this in the 1980’s ended in tears. it is difficult to prepare an edible Rendang or Bakso products from Thawed Buffalo Meat. The above delicious Indonesian dishes need to be prepared from warm/hot, chilled product, Imported feeders, slaughtered in Indonesia.

  2. Eion McAllister, 17/01/2017

    Great to see Indian buffalo meat industry following our lead with all this LPA rubbish! Our Indonesian markets and most other Asian importers don’t care a hoot about this or they wouldn’t be importing buffalo meat from Foot and Mouth Diseased countries successfully and scaling up the levels of imports. Buffalo meat is the greatest threat to the sale of Australian beef into Asian markets and it is clear that it is saleable and available and quickly becoming preferable in the mass market situation. We have been blindly following the mantra of high value beef cut exports and marketing this traceability furphy as a magical edge and value adding strategy. Only a small percentage of an animal is prime cuts and the rest is turning into high cost product that is clearly unable to compete with the Indian product on price and judging by market acceptance all other factors as well. LPA adds significant costs to producers and the supply chain in general and doesn’t deliver enhanced returns to producers. Perhaps the future of the scheme should be to get rid of it and the huge bureacracy and industry it has created that continue to bleed money from producers across the nation. It is clear that our northern markets don’t value it, despite the bumpf to the contrary from MLA, when they embrace a product with the supply background and history of carabeef.

Get Beef Central's news headlines emailed to you -
FREE!