Had a great experience in Melbourne last Wednesday watching 350 head of Holstein heifers being loaded onto a Qantas 747 freight carrier bound for Hanoi.

Hannaford Stock and Land had been involved in the purchase of a large proportion of these cattle through David Blanch, who did an outstanding job in organising and dealing with the Vietnamese.
The absolute professional organisation of the loading of cattle from midnight, prior to departure, into specially designed wooden crates, which also have internal mats that absorb most of the cattle waste products. These crates are all individually weighed and fed into a computer, which then places them in a strict order that allows for the trimming of the plane through the correct weight distribution. Once the plane arrives, and whilst taking on around 90 tonne of fuel, the crates are loaded through a large cargo bay door, fore and aft sides by scissor lifts. The amount of preparation and organisation that goes into this prior to loading, allows for the cattle to be loaded in approximately 45 minutes. Another interesting statistic that the Loadmaster for the plane told me, was that these planes spend approximately 14 out of every 24 hours in the air, seven days a week. These cattle would be on Vietnamese soil by a little after midnight that night our time.

This particular plane was going from Melbourne to Hanoi, Hanoi to Bangkok, Bangkok to North America, North America to Europe, Europe to Malaya and Malaya to Australia, which was expected to be completed in nine days.

Hasn’t the world become a small place these days………………..

Further to the devastating news from Japan in relation to the foot and mouth disease outbreak, some of the figures that are emerging are quite startling.
Over 200,000 animals have been destroyed since March, with a 150,000 of those being pigs. Apparently one of the country’s prized Wagyu herds is still intact. This certainly brings back the absolute need for our quarantine authorities and federal government to lift their game to the highest priority. One would not wish to think about the devastation that could be reaped upon our National herd. Just the economic cost, with figures between 9 and 12 billion, plus the International reputation to our clean, green, disease free food would be irreparable.
The fact that the Government is refusing to provide an additional $260 million per year, recommended by it’s own quarantine review panel, makes you wonder where their real priorities are in this time of throwing money around in all directions…….except ours.

Interesting report out this week, via the Rabobank senior analysis about how China has now become the largest market for meat in the world, and demand is expected to rise over the next ten years. Probably a thing that we haven’t all realised is that China is the largest producer of sheep meat and one of the largest producers of beef, dwarfing Australia’s production in both. This is also of interest in that it only represents 14% of their total meat consumption, therefore making it a niche market in China. This niche market runs at 2.5 million tonnes of beef and 2 million tonnes of sheep meat. Local supply is also growing within China due to tax exemptions, input subsidies and import tariffs.

But recently, due to reduced Government support, uncertain markets and rising input prices, has seen production of sheep and cattle become unattractive in China.

This has a fairly familiar ring about it, and is certainly unusual coming from that corner of the world.

Looks like the old saying that “One Man’s bad luck is another persons gain”, might come true as a possible blessing for the Australian Cattle Industry.
The word out of America is that cattle numbers have dropped significantly over there and therefore this adds a bit of light to the hamburger meat job. The other news that may have a great affect on our export to Japan is the outbreak this week of foot and mouth disease. Reports coming out of Japan are suggesting that it is almost impossible, at this stage to control. It was detected mainly in Wagyu herds and will obviously mean a further opening for our high-end quality beef cuts. This is quite significant with Japan being one of our major Beef trading partners. I am sure that there will be quite a few cattlemen who will be quietly confident that this might put a bit more substance in the current market.

Pretty good example that once nature gets revving, it can get life back into perspective. TV’s have been flooded with images of people held up all over Europe with the Volcanic dust fallout and the danger that that imposes on airlines for flying. Another interesting sideline is that our fresh food exports to Europe, have also taken a hit, with the perishable goods being held up in places like Dubai and Sydney, and this is a sizeable export from Australia.

A rough estimate of the ten-day hold-up so far, has cost in perishable goods terms, over $540,000. An interesting sideline to all of this is that with Mothers Day coming up, is a little known fact that the Kenyan farmers are one of the major suppliers of flowers to Europe. The price is generally about $13 per bunch and has now dropped to about 37 cents a bunch on the streets of Nairobi.

Looks like there will be some pretty happy Mums in Kenya this year !