In the 1880s my Great Grandfather refused to grant a licence for a fifth slaughterhouse in Crookwell. The nearest beef works is now a two-hour drive away. The absence of local kill is becoming a serious problem in NSW.
Fate propelled me into abattoir licencing with the NSW Meat Industry Authority from 1983. In 1985 I was asked by the Wran government to solve the county council moth-balled abattoir problem. Councils owed $67 million.
After 1950, NSW parliamentary committees recommended many sites for export standard multispecies abattoirs as the US market opened. Many electoral favour abattoirs followed and we developed huge overcapacity and consequent unviability. We recommended the permanent cancellation of the licences of Goulburn, Wagga Wagga, Dubbo, Moree, Guyra and Forbes in return for a $45m government bailout to the councils.
On my 1983 Churchill Fellowship I saw single species abattoirs everywhere. Two US abattoirs could have done all NSW’s cattle kill. Most striking was the far superior utilisation of by-products.
The ongoing quandary was keeping a geographic spread of smaller abattoirs with inefficient “by-product” use against centralised, high throughput, high “by-product” utilisation works. In retrospect, I would implement the Queensland Q Safe system to keep geographic access for small local service kills.
The past 30 years has seen huge rationalisation. In 1961, when Jack Shute spoke, there were 463 slaughterhouses/abattoirs in NSW. There are now 31 (and 35 chicken works).
Two multinational firms now account for nearly half our cattle kill. One of them, JBS Swift, and has serious problems in both Americas. Had there been an Australian Meat Authority, as recommended to John Anderson in 1997, or a Packers and Stockyard Act, as introduced in the US in 1921 to counter the then Swift’s processing dominance, this wouldn’t have happened. Canberra has been and remains irresponsible.
In 1961 Shute suggested we try the US grading system. Since then, Australia has displayed arrogant ignorance. It has no slaughter equipped meat science university, but has tried to upstage the US, which has 35. The late Peter Menagazza phoned me after purchasing Stanbroke. He said “I trade potatoes globally in US dollars. Their beef grading system is the world standard – why haven’t we followed Canada, Japan and Korea in adopting it?”
From 1981 we did have a state-based gold branding system for beef. NSW, WA and Qld had consumer awareness and increased pricing. Then, some processors and Cattle Council had the scheme taken over by Ausmeat and discontinued. MSA is not independent, nor understood by consumers and there has been a steep decline in consumption since its inception.
Our chickens are coming home to roost.
- John Carter