New highs for compliance

Some of the many achievements of the integrity system were highlighted at the recent inaugural Integrity System Company (ISC) Stakeholder Forum.

More than 94,000 red meat producers have now completed the Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) accreditation process under the Integrity Systems Company’s (ISC) enhanced program since it was launched in October 2017.

Of these producers, 17,070 were new accreditations; 16,730 were voluntary renewals; and 57,460 were requested renewals.

In 2017, the LPA program was strengthened with the addition of biosecurity and animal welfare to the existing food safety requirements, and the introduction of a more rigorous accreditation system.

While LPA is a voluntary program, it is recognised both domestically and internationally, and demanded by supply chains around the globe.

There are now 200,412 LPA accredited Property Identification Codes (PICs) and 87% producer awareness of LPA.

Producer recognition of the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) is also high amongst producers, reaching 98% this year.

Enhancements to the NLIS database were introduced in 2019 to improve the user interface and reporting functions.

NLIS movement recording compliance was 96% in 2018-19.

NLIS data for 2018-19 showed there were 23.4 million cattle movements, 38.3 million sheep (mob) movements and 2.5 million goat (mob) movements.

Individual NLIS sheep movements increased 175% to 11 million and individual goat movements increased 40% to 7,751. This substantial increase was a result of the implementation of mandatory electronic identification and individual movement recording for sheep and goats in Victoria.

Adoption of the electronic National Vendor Declaration (eNVD) system continues to grow since the platform was developed by ISC and launched for broad industry use in 2017.

In 2018-19, there were 83,066 consignments of livestock via eNVD, representing 21.6% of all consignments.

The eNVD enables NVDs, Animal health declarations, National Feedlot Accreditation Scheme (NFAS) declarations, and Meat Standards Australia (MSA) declarations to be entered and accessed electronically through the supply chain to streamline data transfer, reducing costs and improving information accuracy.

Utilisation of Livestock Data Link (LDL), the online feedback system that allows producers to analyse results, benchmark their performance, and access ‘Solutions to Feedback’ in order to improve their business performance, has also grown.

More than 1,500 producers now access feedback through LDL.

LDL feedback is available on an estimated 9% of all industry throughput and is increasing month on month. In 2019, the first of four beef processors have started uploading animal health data to LDL.

Adoption of myMLA - the customised online dashboard that provides personalised, relevant content to each user – is steadily increasing with near 44,000 myMLA accounts opened. A total of 19,335 LPA and NLIS accounts are now linked to myMLA (9,384 NLIS accounts and 9,951 LPA accounts).

myMLA allows producers to have just one user-name and password to access key integrity systems — NLIS, LPA, NVDs and LDL.