A pilot project has begun in Gippsland aiming to use data to assuage community concerns about welfare issues around raising dairy and dairy-beef calves.
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It is the first extension project to go ahead with 50:50 joint funding from Dairy Australia and Meat & Livestock Australia, and aims to develop research information that can demonstrate best practice in the supply chain.
It will also attempt to address animal welfare concerns from activist groups, consumers and industry about raising dairy and dairy-beef calves for meat.
The pilot project steering committee involves several Gippsland dairy farmers including Ben Elliott, Trevor Saunders, Anthea Day, Will Jelbart, Kim and Lee Kirkus, and Colin Wientjens.
Callen Thompson from Agstar Projects has been contracted by Dairy Australia to facilitate the pilot project.
The first meeting of the pilot project steering group was held at Meeniyan in February.
“The aim of the first meeting was to get producers together to plan and discuss the objectives of the pilot project, and to select other stakeholders to be involved,” Callen said.
“The pilot project aims to identify and demonstrate pathways for dairy calves.”
The pilot project comes on the back of a tour by Canadian animal welfare researcher Dr Nina von Keyserlingk and her collaboration with Dairy Australia’s national animal welfare lead Dr Sarah Bolton.
In a series of seminars across dairy farming regions and hosted by Dairy Australia, Nina discussed global concerns about how farming systems do or don’t protect the welfare of calves, including dairy calves.
Nina advised dairy farmers that refuting the animal welfare concerns of activists, trade partners and other stakeholders along the supply chain required research that demonstrated best practice.
“The health and welfare challenges of surplus calves requires transformational change,” she said.
That included exploring avenues for justifying the retention of dairy and dairy-beef calves along the supply chain.
Examples include retaining calves on the dairy farm, that includes calves being raised by foster cows; selling calves to people who will raise them for meat; growing out steers and surplus heifers for meat; growing out calves for the export dairy heifer market; and growing out F1 calves for domestic breeders.
One of the practices to eradicate is euthanising calves. Nina said in Canada there was evidence that nine per cent of dairy farmers admitted to killing surplus calves (not sick calves) using blunt force trauma. This was an unacceptable practice to the general public.
“Socially, the consumer wants to be able to buy milk and not feel guilty they are supporting an industry that’s immoral,” Nina said.
“But farmers feel burdened by the need to solve the problem alone — creating change needs to connect the supply chain to the resolution.”
Ten focus groups were created in Canada to resolve a similar issue, and involved dairy farmers, veterinarians and industry personnel including animal nutritionists and representatives from meat processors, transport companies and service organisations.
There are 9000 dairy farms in Canada and animal welfare standards have been developed that include codes of practice that are independently audited and form part of the marketing strategy and labelling of dairy and meat products.
Strategies also include publishing labelling that consumers should avoid because they are not compliant with the audited code of practice.
Those decoded and suspicious non-compliant terms include some that are commonly used in Australia, including antibiotic-free, naturally raised and hormone-free.
It includes naming certification programs that don’t comply under Canada’s codes of practice for raising farmed animals and processing food and fibre products.
The Gippsland pilot project is the first ever Dairy Australia and Meat & Livestock Australia 50:50 joint funded extension program and aims to connect dairy farmers to pathways for dairy calves.
Callen Thompson said three farms in Gippsland had been nominated as producer demonstration sites to enable two years of data gathering — at Tarwin, Mirboo North and Yarragon.
The pilot project reference group identified a list of stakeholders from along the supply chain that they wanted to invite to participate in the pilot project.
Callen said the farmers involved were keen to learn about the different markets they could consider, and how to build connections along the supply chain, to complement their herd joining and calf management options.
“There’s a number of different opportunities for calves to enter the supply chain in the dairy-beef space,” he said.
“We know that not everyone is going to be aiming at the same markets, or able to manage calves to the same weights.”
Knowledge will be shared through field days and published case studies and learning modules.
The project has capacity for eventually extending into other dairy regions, subject to funding.
In a lot of ways, the extension program is building on industry movement that is already being led by corporate stakeholders along the supply chain.
Last year, key staff from Greenhams undertook a tour of dairy and beef regions and held public meetings with farmers and other stakeholders to discuss their aims for developing a specific dairy-beef supply chain.
The Greenhams business recently completed new processing facilities to meet the growing demand for high quality beef, and has identified the dairy-beef sector as a viable supplier of grass and grain-fed meat.
MLA recently reported 47 per cent of the total cattle slaughter in Australia is produced out of the lotfeeding sector, and this is expected to continue to grow in the next five years, to meet consumer demand for high quality beef in more than 100 countries.
The Greenhams business model includes a range of labels that accredit auditable animal welfare and sustainable practices on the farm. Their auditable standards were developed to comply with the cultural expectations of consumers in a range of countries.
Teys Australia’s chief sustainability officer Carl Duncan recently told a Beef Sustainability Framework Consultative Committee meeting in Brisbane that consumers expected industry to demonstrate measurable outcomes to their concerns about animal welfare, land use and sustainability.
Creating Teys’ reporting methodology included stakeholders from within and outside the meat industry, and was done to ensure issues were addressed with accountability and transparency along the supply chain.
The body of work was completed with a global perspective, given Teys accesses 60 markets around the world.
Carl said the Teys business had developed 52 indicators that demonstrated the business’s credentials that included animal welfare and environmental standards along the supply chain.
This data enabled the Teys business to create provenance stories around meat products that consumers could trust.
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