September 20, 2012

Australia's temporary ban on live cattle exports to Indonesia in 2011 had a negative effect on Japan, where Australian cattle are well treated.

The Australian Federal Government temporarily banned live exports to Indonesia in June last year after the ABC's Four Corners programme broadcast footage showing cattle being mistreated by workers at Indonesian abattoirs. Exports resumed a month later after an agreement was reached on new standards.

Agribusiness Elders chief executive Malcolm Jackman said that the live export ban to Indonesia and the subsequent exporter supply chain assurance system (SCAS) was still "a huge issue''.

Jackman said Elders was engaged in the very profitable export of live Wagyu cattle to Japan but the SCAS "has been introduced without anybody going up to explain to the Japanese government or the Japanese beef industry that this is how it works''.

He said the Japanese were annoyed the SCAS had been imposed upon them and that it would be costly. "In the nicest, politest way, the Japanese industry is telling us to: stick it!'' he said.

"They are saying, you (Australia) have taken some footage out of Indonesia, which we agree was abhorrent and you have now applied the lowest-common-denominator standard to this high-value, well-managed, long-successful, never-been-a-problem industry in Japan".

"You've imposed it, and you haven't actually had the decency to come and tell us about it.'' Jackman said that, in Indonesia, economic development officials did not want to speak to the Federal Government about the development of cattle breeding in Indonesia, preferring to deal directly with the companies that were investing in that nation. "We (Australia) have a huge reputational issue in Indonesia and we are not improving it at all," Jackman said.