New CEO appointed
Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA) has announced Jo Quigley as the new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of its subsidiary, Integrity Systems Company (ISC).
ISC is responsible for managing Australia’s key red meat traceability, animal welfare, food safety and biosecurity programs including the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS), Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) and the electronic National Vendor Declaration (eNVD).
Ms Quigley’s appointment comes following an extensive search to replace Dr Jane Weatherley who departed the role of CEO in August to become MLA’s General Manager Communication & Adoption.
Ms Quigley has served as Group Manager – ISC Operations for the last seven years and has been acting CEO since August. In announcing her appointment, MLA’s Managing Director Jason Strong said Ms Quigley’s industry insights, extensive experience, and strong relationships with stakeholders made her highly suited to the position. Keep reading the media release…
Five minutes with our new CEO
Read this brief Q&A to learn more about Jo and hear her thoughts on what the future holds for ISC.
1. What motivates you most about your role?
Agriculture is my passion. I grew up on the land across livestock and mixed farming properties, I studied agricultural economics at uni, and my career in the sector spans more than 25 years.
During this time, I’ve been fortunate to have played a role in many significant changes across the red meat industry – things like the national roll-out of NLIS, the establishment of the Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) program, the digitisation of NVDs, and the formation of ISC as a wholly-owned subsidiary of MLA.
What motivates me most as CEO is the impact our programs, systems and standards have on the industry. We’re enabling livestock producers to stand by what they sell and give their customers confidence in the quality and safety of Australian red meat across more than 100 global export markets.
I’m also driven by the opportunity to work closely with livestock producers, the supply chain and government. By working collaboratively, we’re able to streamline, enhance and strengthen red meat integrity programs to ensure that the industry remains at the forefront of traceability, biosecurity and product integrity for many years to come.
2. How have our red meat integrity programs changed over the past 20 years?
When I started at MLA in 2003, the national rollout of NLIS for cattle was just commencing. Back then it was a single species system and its functionality was pretty basic. These days it’s a multi-species platform that includes cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and South American camelids. We capture around 60 million livestock movements across the country annually, and there are tens of thousands of interactions with the NLIS platform daily. This data then integrates with the sophisticated tracing tools used by government to support disease and biosecurity preparedness, and response activities.
Twenty years ago, the Livestock Production Assurance (LPA) program was also in its infancy. It started as an on-farm food safety program designed to underpin declarations made in the paper-based NVDs. In 2017, the LPA program moved from AUS-MEAT to ISC and we enhanced the program with a new reaccreditation process, as well as adding animal welfare and biosecurity elements. It now provides a framework that helps producers demonstrate their on-farm risk management in relation to food safety, biosecurity, and animal welfare. While participation is entirely voluntary, we now have more than 177,000 LPA-accredited producers, which is an incredible testament to the value of the program.
The other major shift has been the digitisation of many of our products and services. We now have the electronic NVD (eNVD) platform, and our communication and extension programs are largely delivered through digital channels, enabling us to reach many more producers than before. The digital tools underpinning our customer service have improved our ability to help producers who need support and capture the customer feedback we need to continue improving the customer experience.
In all that time, the one thing that hasn’t changed is the importance of being out in the field – listening to producers, understanding their challenges and working with them to ensure we are supporting industry with the integrity system programs they need.
3. How is the new NLIS platform going to change things?
The Australian Government grant to build a new national livestock traceability database is an extraordinary opportunity for ISC. It means we’ll be able to deliver a more user-friendly interface, while also ensuring there’s a fit-for-purpose data capture, storage and distribution system that has the flexibility and scalability needed to meet the industry’s changing needs over the next 20 years.
The new NLIS will be more intuitive and easier to use, with a streamlined user experience that integrates with our other integrity products, such as the eNVD and LPA.
4. What are the biggest challenges to traceability over the next five years?
Traceability is set to become increasingly important in future years. In the beginning, our traceability system was established to track livestock for disease and food safety purposes, but we are now seeing it emerge as a key feature to help underpin our producers’ product and raising claims – such as hormone-free and antibiotic-free, and in the future it could support things like our sustainability credentials. Traceability, coupled with programs (such as the LPA) that can verify these claims, is something that will be increasingly important to markets and customers in coming years, and the new NLIS platform will make it easier for us to meet this demand.