Casino Food Co-op red meat pilot trial

Key points

This trial proved that individual and lot-based disease and defect data can be successfully transferred through to Livestock Data Link (LDL) to inform on farm decisions that will improve carcase performance and overall productivity.
This trial provided producers supplying Casino Food Co-op with feedback on consignments sent to the plant through Livestock Data Link (LDL) for the first time ever.
Casino Food Co-op believes that providing animal disease and defect feedback to producers helps bring further understanding of disease and defects in the Australian beef herd, particularly regarding the geographic distribution of disease, to ultimately maximise yield outcomes for producers.
In the future, Casino Food Co-op would like to see animal disease and defect feedback provided on a national scale, if producers can be educated in the use of the LDL system or future feedback mechanisms.

Introduction

The purpose of The Casino Food Co-op animal disease data pilot study was to demonstrate the value of sharing and utilising disease and defect data along the supply chain to improve productivity and profitability.

The project was part of the red meat pilot trials for the Rural Research & Development for Profit project Health 4 Wealth.

While many meat processing recording systems are already in place, data collection on disease-related carcase and offal condemnations and feedback of this information to producers varies considerably. The Health 4 Wealth project aims to introduce a standardised and comprehensive approach to data collection of disease-related carcase and offal condemnations and feedback to producers. This will allow producers to monitor disease prevalence in their livestock and make informed decisions to maximise yield outcomes.

Objectives

The objective of The Casino Food Co-op animal disease data pilot study project was to:

Demonstrate that individual and lot-based animal disease and defect data can be effectively and efficiently transferred to producers.
Demonstrate that animal disease and defect data can be correlated to an individual animal where and individual ID is present.
Provide animal disease and defect inspection information to producers to help them make better informed decisions regarding on-farm practices to improve livestock/carcase performance.
Provide learnings that can be incorporate into the wider Health 4 Wealth project
Provide recommendations that can be incorporated into the NLIS and LDL project plans to further develop these systems in carcase disease and defect data collection and dissemination.

Methodology

In working to achieve the project objectives a series of six milestones were developed and actioned in a chronological order. These milestones were:

Standardise recording of agreed conditions.
Amend existing systems to enable standardised defect and diseases to be recorded.
Identification of infrastructure and hardware requirements.
Training of meat inspectors.
Validating that the data being collected is correct (Data validation).
Processor soft launch of animal disease and defect feedback within the supply chain.

All project milestones were achieved.

Results

The Casino Food Co-op in completing the final stages of this project has identified the outcomes as a success with all development, training and validation completed effectively. During the last milestone, the soft launch, the plant found that members were quite receptive of the LDL platform, and the disease and defect data available.

Benefits to industry

The project has demonstrated proof-of-concept that individual and lot-based carcase disease and defect data can be effectively and efficiently transferred from the abattoir to producers through existing industry infrastructure such as LDL and NLIS.
The Casino Food Co-op believes that it helps industry to understand the disease and defects in the Australian beef herd.
Collecting animal disease and defect data sheds light on geographic distribution of disease, highlighting problems at a regional level and allowing individual farm treatment, management, and control programs to be developed to maximise yield outcomes.

Future research and recommendations

The Casino Food Co-op are keen to see disease and defect feedback become a national system and service provided to all producers but failing that, they see the benefit to our members and will ultimately progress this.
The Casino Food Co-op recommends that the only aspect that would need to be further considered for the rollout would be the education of producers in the use of the LDL platform.

Useful resources

Health 4 Wealth Rural Research and Development for Profit

Rural Research and Development for Profit