Resolve CARs from LPA audits

Approximately 3,000 Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) audits are conducted each year to ensure LPA-accredited producers are implementing the necessary systems to comply with the program’s rules and standards. These audits are a crucial means of underpinning the integrity of Australian red meat, ensuring that our product is safe to eat, ethically produced and of a high quality.   

Qualified auditors from AUS-MEAT will conduct the audit at a suitable time arranged with the producer. Audits may be conducted on-farm or remotely and involve a series of checks to ensure appropriate systems are in place to maintain food safety, biosecurity and animal welfare standards, as well as ensuring necessary and accurate records are kept.   

Most audits are conducted without issue, especially if producers review on-farm practices against the audit checklist included in the LPA audit notification pack provided to them prior to their audit.   

However, in the event that an LPA audit discovers a producer’s on-farm practices to be in breach of any of the LPA rules or standards, the producer audited may be issued with a notice of their non-conformance in the form of a corrective action request (CAR).   

A CAR indicates that a major non-conformance with the LPA rules or standards has been discovered within the producer’s on-farm systems, which has the potential to compromise food safety, biosecurity or animal welfare, or otherwise affect the integrity of the Australian red meat industry.   

When a CAR has been issued following an LPA audit, producers are notified by the auditor and an alert is placed on their LPA account home page.  The producer will then be required to take action to correct the non-conformance within a specified period of time, as instructed by the auditor.   

Further updates to the LPA system allow producers to now upload evidence directly to their LPA account to demonstrate that sufficient action has been taken to fulfil the CAR. A step-by-step guide is available to assist producers to respond to a CAR online. Alternately you can submit the evidence via email or post directly to AUS-MEAT.

The evidence provided by either of these means will be reviewed and if satisfactory, will ensure the CAR is resolved. Should necessary action not be taken to resolve the CAR(s) raised, accreditation may be wirthdrawn from the associated LPA Account. 

Producers can also now view all previous history of audits conducted and CARs raised for each property identification code (PIC) since the inception of the program.