CEO Message

Dear all,

I've recently returned from Beef Australia 2024 in Rockhampton where over 115,000 attendees, including Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and Agriculture Minister Murray Watt, came together.

Beef provided a great opportunity for me to catch up with industry stakeholders and producers to discuss the work ISC is undertaking to ensure Australia’s red meat integrity system keeps pace with global expectations.

Over the week, ISC hosted a busy booth in the bustling MLA marquee and Elizabeth Bradley – Manager Quality, Policy and Compliance and Demelsa Lollback – Project Manager, Adoption also presented on key topics, including:

• the Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) program and how it is evolving to meet future market access needs for Australian red meat
• what’s new with the electronic National Vendor Declaration (eNVD)
• an update on the NLIS Database Uplift project.

Other key highlights for me included: a

• Catching up with so many stakeholders and producers from across the country. It was great to hear about the opportunities happening across industry with so many positive conversations taking place at the various seminars and social events, as well as the one-on-ones that were going on all the time in the MLA marquee.
• Hearing many speakers discuss the importance of promoting our strengths as an industry (such as the care shown for our animals and the environment) and finding ways to share these stories more widely, both here and overseas.
• Learning first-hand about the positive experiences our producers are having with ISC’s products, as well as gaining a better understanding of where challenges might exist and how our customer experience can be improved.

If you want to catch up with the news coming out of the event, you can find a range of Beef Australia media releases here.a

Transporter eNVD survey

The ISC team continues to work with producers and other parts of the red meat supply chain to fast track industry transition to electronic National Vendor Declarations (eNVDs).

Livestock transporters use NVDs multiple times a day, so they will play a vital role in ensuring the successful adoption of the eNVD across our industry. As such, ISC has engaged AgSTAR Projects to consult with a variety of livestock transporters to better understand complex livestock movement paths throughout Australia and how eNVDs could be used in these situations.

The project will help ISC identify what barriers are preventing transporter uptake of eNVDs and what actions are needed to overcome these. Livestock transporters who would like to have their say on this important issue can indicate their interest by completing this survey.

I’d be grateful if you could share this link with your networks to help us capture the journeys and experience of as many livestock transporters as possible.

EOI to participate in new study investigating PFAS in livestock

In recent years, the widespread use of Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) has become the subject of increasing research due to its ability to persist and accumulate in the environment.

We know little about the impact of PFAS in agricultural systems and a new study being conducted by the University of Adelaide and the University of Queensland (with funding from the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) will assess the relationship between the historical use of biosolids or wastewater effluent and the levels of PFAS detected in livestock blood samples, soil, water, plant, feed, and biosolid samples.

All results will be anonymised before publication and all expenses relating to sampling and analysis are fully covered by the project. Participating producers will also receive their individual results free of charge as well as a copy of the final report.

For more information about the study and how to get involved, refer to this fact sheet.

New look Integrity Matters

This month’s edition of Integrity Matters also showcases a new newsletter template which has been developed to enable us to share more stories and technical content to help you better use and understand our programs.

I hope you enjoy the expanded content this month and look forward to sharing more stories about our integrity systems in July’s edition.

Kind regards
Jo Quigley
ISC CEO