GROWING demand from environmentally-aware producers for food source and production information means many opportunities for red meat producers.
A recent independent study funded by two Australian cattle companies and Australian Land Management (ALM) Group has identified market opportunities in Europe and Asia for beef sourced from properties with internationally recognised environmental certification.
Europe-based consultant Alex Dalley who completed the study, said specialist distributors were now willing to trial shipments of environmentally-certified beef from Australia.
He said beef processors needed to differentiate their product from that of other suppliers and Australia’s “environmental strengths” provided a great opportunity to create a brand that would appeal to European consumers.
As this trend has grown, ALM has been quietly completing research in the background and developing an internationally recognised certification process, based on the ISO 140001 standard.
ALM chief executive officer Tony Gleeson said unless such a certification process was taken up, “overseas importers, wholesalers and retailers will impose systems on Australian producers that are designed for European and American production systems”.
Further to this, it offered a chance for producers to step up and become price-setters, not price-takers.
The locally grown certification has been in the making for 10 years and has now been trialed for the last five.
Developed with the Australian environment and whole-of-farm production systems in mind, momentum for the environmental certification was slowly building, Mr Gleeson said.
“We see that as fundamentally important for both conservation purposes and also for productive farm systems.”
Catchment authorities had started giving preference to producers involved in the program largely because one of the requirements is landholders need to be able to demonstrate to auditors they’ve taken into account the regional natural resource’s priorities and strategies.
“That means those organisations …. are moving towards giving preference in their funding to people with our certification.”
And The Merino Company had begun to pay a three per cent premium for wool from properties with ALM certification.
A software system has also been developed by ALM to simplify the certification and upkeep processes, but also to make it cost-effective.
Market benefits may follow for producers, suppliers and processors who become environmentally certified, but this would likely remain the hardest benefit to obtain.
Curtailing this was the lack of a national approach to an environmental standard, Ms Gleeson said.
He said a lot of time and resources were currently being wasted with industry standards which are “home spun and don’t comply with international standards”.
While Australia had experienced good success with the development of disease control and animal health management systems, Mr Gleeson said industry tended to “drop the bundle” in the environmental field.
“It seems so sad because Australia has such good environmental credentials and we aught to be using them to improve our position internationally.”
The ALM certification provided an opportunity to differentiate Australian product in the international market place, Mr Gleeson said.
“People are looking – particularly in more luxurious markets – for a better product.
“They want to know where the product was produced, was it under environmentally friendly terms, good labour relations?”
ALM is currently reviewimg international systems that apply in Tesco and Sainsburys in the UK and Walmart in the US and has discovered, all have different environmental programs.
“Australian producers will need to sit in with these different programs as things evolve.
“Unless we start to get in front of the pack and develop our own systems, we’ll have systems imposed upon us by people who aren’t familiar with our environment and trade systems.”
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