Australia-The cost of greenhouse emissions to the meat trade.

AUSTRALA-MEAT INDUSTRY COMPLAINING.

Red meat processors have proposed a series of productivity-based reforms to current AQIS export meat inspection systems as a last-ditch attempt to soften the blow from a new $32 million Federal Government tax on meat inspection.

Australia’s export abattoirs will face a 60 percent rise in AQIS charges from July 1, representing an additional $1m-plus in annual fees for larger individual plants. Processors this week widely condemned the Federal Government’s proposal, which is based on a move from 60pc cost recovery on AQIS export meat inspection to 100pc. The Australian Meat Industry Council, supported unanimously by other red meat peak council groups, has attempted to negotiate a compromise solution with the Government over the impost since December, arguing that no other significant beef export country in the world operates under such a system. This week, largely out of a sense of frustration and lack of progress, it has decided to take the issue into the public realm. As with last week’s disclosures that large processors face an additional $63m annual bill from next year under the Rudd Government’s Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, additional AQIS charges on exporters will inevitably be borne by cattle suppliers through lower livestock purchase price. Last December, the Beale Review on quarantine and biosecurity matters recommended a return to 100pc cost recovery on AQIS export charges. Up to the year 2000, industry had paid 100pc of AQIS fees. However, a Productivity Commission review at the time recommended moving to a cost-sharing arrangement, recognising that there were legitimate socialised costs that should be borne by the Government. That rationale was accepted by the Howard government, and in 2000 it implemented the system that exists today, where exporters pay 60pc of costs (covering AQIS’s direct inspection and certification).