🇦🇺 Webinar: Preparing for Farm Audits with Better Record Keeping

Paperwork may be the least exciting part of livestock management, but getting through your farm audits and maintaining compliance is essential. Today we discuss how the animal record keeping tools in AgriWebb help.

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[Dave O’Brien]

Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to our webinar today. We’re covering everything audits and looking at how you can prepare for them on farm and how to stay complaint. Thank you very much for tuning in and listening today. It’s really exciting to welcome Kathleen Allen from Integrity Systems who we’re going to be hearing from shortly. She’s going to deliver some really great insights for us. My name is David O’Brien and I’m Head of Farm success here at AgriWebb and I’ll be your host for today.

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I’m going to hand it over to Kathleen now  to share with us some of her insights. There’s quite a lot to cover from Kathleen. So Kathleen, are able to to jump in there? Welcome. Thank you for joining us.

[Kathleen Allen]

Thank you so much and welcome everybody. Thanks very much for the opportunity. Thanks to the AgriWebb team. I’m from Yass in southern NSW and I’m pleased to report that it’s currently sitting at about a temperature of about -4. It’s absolutely freezing. It’s wet and it’s coming in horizontal ice but and compared to this time last year. It’s a good place to be. It will certainly set us up for a great spring.

We do have quite a bit of information to get through and I do hope that the Internet stays with me this afternoon. Where will we start? I’ll just go through the role of the Integrity Systems Company, the importance of the red meat integrity system to all of us as a livestock sector, the integrity system programs, particularly livestock production assurance and the National Livestock Identification System. Then of particular of relevance today is the accreditation and audits and making sure that you are compliant with your LPA requirements. Then we’ll do a couple of handy tips and tools, in particular, helping you with sign up to my MLA to also help make life a little bit easier for you. 

To start off with, Integrity Systems Company–for those of you that haven’t heard of us or don’t know– ISC is a subsidiary of Meat and Livestock Australia which is a service provider to the industry. MLA and Integrity Systems Company provide those industry services. The organisations in the top row are focused on policy and strategy, and they’re often referred to as the peak industry councils. They advocate on behalf of producers to a range of decision makers including at the government level or at that service provider level as well. Now all those organisations on that chart there do certainly have separate roles, but they all work together to support the future sustainability and profitability of the sector. A little bit about Meat and Livestock Australia: MLA is responsible for research, development, adoption and marketing activities on behalf of the red meat and livestock sector in Australia. We collaborate with the Australian Government and the wider red meat industry to do that. We do that by investing in a range of initiatives that contribute to producer profitability, sustainability and global competitiveness, and the way that we do that is through investing those levies. So every time sheep, cattle and goats are sold, there is a transaction levy paid. That levy is then matched with Australian government dollars up to a capped point and invested into a range of R&D and marketing activities on behalf of livestock producers. Integrity Systems Company, we manage and deliver Australia’s red meat integrity system and it’s this system that underpins consumer confidence in on-farm production of Australian Red meat and it covers both on farm assurance through the Livestock Production Assurance program (or LPA) and identification and traceability through the National Livestock Identification System (or the NIS) which I’m sure you’re all very familiar with. ISC works collaboratively with government and industry, primarily through the Safe Meat Framework to deliver these world leading traceability and assurance programs. These are the foundations of the Australian Red Meat Integrity system. The red meat integrity system, which is made-up of that identification and traceability and on-farm assurance components  ensures that Australian red meat is safe to eat and fully traceable. It provides on-farm assurance, animal identification and traceability from paddock to plate and it underpins the Australian livestock selling system and it gives confidence to buyers, retailers and consumers all around the world. Just to put all of that into context as to why it’s really important that we do have this red meat integrity system that underpins our market and that’s because the Australian red meat industry is now a $28 billion industry. It employs 400,000 people. Across 80,000 businesses and delivers product to 105 global markets all around the world. We’re pretty serious, a large and important industry to the Australian economy and there are thousands of people who depend on our industry for their livelihood and also their food security and protein requirements. That’s both here in Australia and all around the world. Now, the confidence that consumers have in our product is based on traceability along the supply chain, which provides accountability right back to the farm with the animal was raised, and production to an assessed standard. As a first world country, we often take it for granted that our food is produced safely and ethically, but that’s not the case in every country. When you are selling food…and that’s what we do as livestock producers…we are food producers. When we sell a lot of that food to international markets and certainly that is the case in Australia. Transparent, rigorous production systems that require audited record keeping on farm are essential. Our international buyers require that these systems are in place. We’ve got some examples on the slide there from overseas where there’s been issues overseas, such as mad cow disease, foot and mouth disease, African swine fever. It’s these sort of risks to our farms and consumers that we absolutely want to avoid. These just highlight why that integrity system that is made-up of identification and traceability and that on farm insurance component is so important because it protects our industry prosperity, our market access and competitive advantage and that’s linked to our reputation for providing safe, high quality food. It supports premium prices and positive overseas perceptions of our product. It also ensures that Australia’s reputation as a clean green supplier of food is maintained now. While there are multiple producers and many, many properties across Australia, the integrity system really is about delivering one measure of quality through one integrity system. Regardless of where you are in the value chain or the role that you play–everybody has got a role to play–to ensure that we stand by what we sell. I realise that we’ve probably got varying levels of experience on the webinar. As a quick refresher, we’ll provide a bit more detail about those two programs which work together to underpin our industries, food safety and traceability on farm.

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For the full transcript please watch the video on our website with captions on. You can also learn more about managing audits and compliance with AgriWebb in the Guides section.