Australia-More costs for beef industry.

AUSTRALIA-MORE COSTS FOR BEEF INDUSTRY.

Apparent conflicting signals between Meat Standards Australia ossification criteria and AusMeat dentition age assessment is costing up to $100/ head on some MSA-compliant animals, beef producers claim.

Australian Beef Association director Lee McNicholl first raised the issue last week, and it was further discussed at last Friday’s MSA producer forum held in Roma.

Mr McNicholl, from Arklow, near Dulacca, said he had been disappointed with recent experiences involving lines of MSA grassfed cattle that had graded exceptionally well (MSA boning groups 6 to 9), only to be hit with heavy ’age’ discounts over dentition.

The issue affected nine of 20 Arklow Angus steers with an average carcase weight of almost 300kg consigned recently to Teys Beenleigh.

Some bodies were discounted from a $3.35/kg premium to the four-tooth rate of $3 – costing his business close to $100/head. They exhibited desirably low MSA ossification scores of 150 to160, but displayed three or four permanent teeth.

Mr McNicholl said his criticisms were not directed specifically at Teys because he applauds the company’s commitment to MSA grassfed product and the substantial premiums on offer.

"Rather, these costly industry-wide discounts are occurring because end-users have not been shown that the MSA ossification score is a better predictor of eating quality and should override AusMeat dentition assessment," he said.

A veterinarian by profession, he said many in the industry knew that the eruption of teeth was a highly inaccurate and inconsistent indicator of age.

"An ossification score of 160 equates to approximately 22 months of age – well under the 27-28 months when cattle normally exhibit four teeth.

"Teeth eruption ’age’ is affected by breed, nutrition and season of birth. Many individuals can prematurely show four teeth, and I believe my cattle were needlessly penalised."

He stressed that the issue under discussion should not be confused with the separate issue of harvesting one or two cuts from boning group 18 carcases derived from much older stock that would otherwise not grade under MSA, which he was opposed to.

Mr McNicholl said he believed there had been some previous history of "politics" between MSA and AusMeat over age assessment, but ossification was known universally as the superior gauge.

"If MSA is going to advance to become a meaningful grading system, these massive inconsistencies need removing.

"It’s a subject that the current MSA review group headed by Malcolm Foster should closely scrutinise."

Teys Brothers livestock general manager Geoff Teys said he was well aware of the anomaly in some cattle being penalised on the eruption of third and four teeth after having earlier "sailed through" their MSA ossification assessment.

The issue came up strongly again during last week’s Roma forum, Mr Teys said; however, there was no simple solution.

"There are several points to consider," he said.

"The first is that beef is often not sold by MSA label alone. Like all plants, we sell beef under the AusMeat language and specifications which include dentition, which is identified with ciphers on each and every carton."

Secondly, beef produced in a typical large commercial plant today was divided into weight ranges, feeding backgrounds and other variables, which could see it end up in one of 20 or more different brands.

"Like a lot of processors moving into MSA, we’ve had to triple our chilling capacity to cater for all those various groupings. The fact is we have to draw a commercial line somewhere on how many categories we can possibly handle."

Currently, Teys MSA brand requires milk and two-tooth cattle, but at this point there were "not a lot" of 3-4 tooth animals coming through the program, he said.

Because of the additional finishing time required on grass, the issue was primarily one that affected grassfed, rather than grainfed animals.

"It’s a logistical problem at present, but when numbers grow to a certain point, we will look at it in terms of making a distinction that more clearly recognises the value of those particular animals," he said.

During Friday’s Roma forum, Central Queensland producer Ian McCamley identified a beast he had consigned that rated MSA boning group 3 (towards the top end of the meat quality range under MSA assessment), yet it was heavily discounted because it showed six teeth.

"We are conscious of the problem and are continuing to look at it. But until numbers of those cattle reach a point that they can justify doing something separate with, it is hard to manage within the numbers being processed across a large processing

enterprise," Mr Teys said.

Asked what he thought of Mr McNicholl’s view that the more "sophisticated and globally recognised" ossification assessment used under MSA should simply override any conflicting teeth-based AusMeat age assessment in price grids, he said while that sounded like a simple solution, there were large supermarkets and other customers that had very specific requirements over AusMeat dentition, which could not realistically be ignored.

"Once there is enough volume to treat those outlier cattle separately, in a commercial sense, then we will be the first to do so. It could well be that highquality four-tooth MSA product like that ends up in a special export pack, where there is less distinction about milk/two-tooth yearling-type descriptions."

Mr Teys said his company was passionate about MSA and opportunities to develop grassfed programs under the system, and it recognised the need to reward producers accurately for what they produced.