Meat needs total industry plan

Lamb prices are riding high but the perfect time for industry reform is in danger of being missed, says SFF chief executive Keith Cooper. "˜No one is doing anything. That's a travesty in my view,' he told Rural News. "˜The time to think long and hard is in more buoyant times.' Lack of reform in 2002 and 2003 when lamb was $75 saw the sector ill-prepared to cope with the subsequent downturn and unless changes are made now it's "˜inevitable we will go through another cycle', he warns. At the recent Sheep and Beef Veterinary Conference in Rotorua Cooper hammered home what he sees as current problems with the sector. "˜The NZ red meat industry profitability is impacted by the lack of a pan-industry strategy, which in turn creates inherent structural inefficiencies, and the blinkered focus by both meat companies and farmers on selling or buying livestock, rather than on pricing a product to customer's specification, as and when the customer wants the product.' Farmers and processors chase volume production to spread overhead costs, while farmers' "˜discretionary raw material supply' translates to an inability among processors to guarantee supply, inhibiting ability to invest in long-term marketing strategies and initiatives. "˜This prevents long-term strategic decision making, and increases processing costs.' The solution is a pan-industry strategy. "˜ The strategy may include or drive potential structural changes based on a common logic"¦ But until there is buy-in to a strategy the fragmentation continues.'A producer group needs to lead the strategy and there needs to be open disclosure about who is involved, as there has been with last week's $17 million meat industry automation project announced by FRST . "˜Those meat companies that don't want in, that's their prerogative, but that needs to be quite transparent so then farmers can make choices about who they supply.'