Australia-Carbon tax will hit beef farmers.

AUSTRALIA.

CARBON EMISIONS TAX.

In 1985 there were no feed lots of any consequence in Australia, unlike Europe or North America, were they were vital because of the Northern Hemisphere winters.

The winters in Australia are so mild, that cattle can stay out all of the year round, given a little hand feeding in the field.

This is not the case in the northern world, where cattle have to be housed in winter because of the frost and snow.

Japan had a whole culture change after the Second World War, not only in the end of Imperial rule but in diet and social life.

The 300,000 US troops stationed in Japan after the war in 1945, demanded beef be sent from the USA, which was of course the well marbled fat by European standards mainly Hereford beef.

They also demanded ground beef for burgers and frankfurters for hot dogs.

By the 1950’s when in became apparent, that despite losing the war, Japan appeared to be winning the peace and were on the way to becoming a global superpower economically, the Japanese culture embraced the American love of beef.

As the economy grew through the sixties and seventies, Japan became a world leading in the importer of high quality grain fed beef.

In 1985 Japanese meat importers looked to Australia for grain fed beef, there was none to be found, not only that, there was no interest on the part of the Australian farmers to build feed-lots for cattle.

Frustrated by the lack of interest in Australia on a government or farming level, Japanese companies such as Mitsubishi, Nippon and Itoham, decided to buy there own farms and build there own feed-lots, with the foresight and vision that was not at that time, to be found in the Australian meat or farming communities.

The Australian meat trade in 1985, was controlled by 5 Families, not unlike the Mafia in New York.

There was the Vestey family, who were the largest players and Australia’s largest farmers, meat packers and meat retailers. Based in North Sydney, they owned Townsville, Rochampton, Riverstone meat companies and the Gilbertson and Angliss groups of companies.

There was the Throsby Family, who owned Charles David Meats, that controlled 8 meat massive beef and lamb plants in Australia, from northern NSW to South Australia, later to become part of Metro Meats, Adelaide Steamship Company.

The Smorgan family, who were the third biggest players, starting in one little butchers shop after the war in Melbourne, became an institution in the Australian meat industry.

The Johnson and Tancred families, who went on to become Australian Meat Holdings without doubt very large players, now part of JBS-Swift..

The Mulligan family, who controlled the sheep industry in NSW and controlled the domestic market in beef and lamb, who never recovered after the closure of Homebush abattoirs and the empire fell apart.

These companies who would not adapt to change and controlled the industry, have all be confined to the history books, leaving the Japanese companies firmly in control of the beef export business, until the arrival of the Boys from Brazil.

The first acquisitions by the Japanese players, were in farms for feed-lots in Queensland, followed by a large bankrupt beef plant in northern NSW Mid-coast Meats and a beef plant at Oakey in Queensland, in which to slaughter their own cattle.

In the early 1990’s Mitsubishi built a feed-lot in Narrandera, in southern NSW with capacity for 50,000 cattle, complete with a state of the art meat complex with capacity for 800 cattle per day.

This mean the Japanese players could buy store cattle, put them into feed lots for 90 days, then process their own beef and export it back to Japan, taking of course all the profits with the beef.

By 1995 the feed-lot business had come of age, every man and his dog in Australia, wanted to get into the cattle feeding business.

No one dreamed at this point, that the government of Australia were going to consider a tax on cattle for belching and farting, as is now being proposed by the Labour government.

This is nearly as bad as the Hawke government in 1989, finding a solution to the wool mountain, by giving every farmer 80cents for a 22 bullet, to shoot his sheep and bury them on the farm to remove the problem.

Should the carbon tax be imposed on beef farmers and feed-lot operators, it will be unprecedented in the history of the meat and farming industry.

Farming groups estimate, the average beef farmer will have to pay AU$6,000 per year on the proposed new tax. This indicates that the large feed-lots, a vital part of the industry today, will be asked to pay tens of thousands.

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