November 2, 2006

Australia's NLIS audit nears completion

The audit of Australia's National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) seems nearing an end now with the Australian government determined to wrap it up within six weeks.

Australian minister for agriculture, fisheries and forestry, Peter McGauran called for an independent audit of the NLIS database in June, following claims of inaccuracies and systemic errors in the system.

The audit was being conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), which was closely monitoring the working of NLIS database, in particular, how individual operators interacted with it, pointed out McGauran.

As part of the audit, about 40 face-to-face interviews were conducted.

Consultations were also made with stakeholders, producers, and abattoirs in Queensland, New South Wales, Victoria, and South Australia.

Though the deadline for the audit was mid-October, an official complaint with the PwC questioning their audit process, terms of reference, and ethics of the auditor did not let the agency proceed.

Just when the work for completion was in full swing, the Australian Beef Association criticised the audit, saying it ignored an investigation into the correlation between what it believes are the processor and producer's real records and the information on the database.

The association believed such an outcome of the audit would make it  misleading.