Northern NSW Farmer and Australian Beef Association Chairman , Brad Bellinger [pictured] writes:
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I wish to draw the attention of Australians to the following facts that the Brazilian Government is moving to assist its Beef Processing Industry with a $Aus 800 million loan facility through its State owned bank.
Meanwhile, the US Government is bargaining for a doubling of the US beef EU quotas to give it four times the access that Australian beef producers have, despite the fact that the USA has no National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) or National Vendor Declarations (NVDs).
Contrast this with what the Australian Labor Government is doing to our Beef industry :
- Doubling of AQIS inspection fees to increase to full cost recovery
- Forcing producers to pay the highest levies at $5 per head of cattle sold to the Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA),
- Paying for the most costly ID systems in the World
- The proposed Emissions Trading Scheme that will charge farmers for bovine methane emissions,
- The proposed Carbon Emission Trading Scheme directed at the processing Industry, which will be passed back to the cattle producers as soon as the scheme commences.
- The Queensland Labor Party, using vegetation regulation in banning re-growth clearing which will effectively remove the beef industry in QLD.
Despite the afore mentioned Government regulations, Australian producers receive the second lowest prices in the developed world and sees Australian consumers pay some of the highest prices for beef in the World.
Australian cattle producers are now receiving 27% of the consumer dollar, whilst the UK producers are on 50% and US producers on 47%.
Two thirds of the Australian land mass – the western side of a line from Adelaide to Townsville, now has only one (dysfunctional) export abattoir (it once had 8).
The big producer operators – the AA Company, Consolidated Pastoral Company, Georgiana Pastoral Company and Great Southern are all selling or trying to sell.
As returns from the mining industry continue to fall, one would have thought that export income from the beef industry was vital to help stem our burgeoning overseas debt.
Governments thinking must be on another planet – the brainless bureaucrats and mindless politicians responsible for this increasing sellout need re -educating in Brazil or the USA.
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