Meatworks access tightens for producers competing with major supermarket chains
A growing number of producers claim abattoirs are "effectively locked up" by supermarkets and exporters.
Impact Ag Australia managing director Hugh Killen oversees 17 sheep and cattle farms from Bundaberg in Queensland to Cootamundra in New South Wales.
Mr Killen wants to market meat raised on those farms as regeneratively produced — a type of farming based on prioritising soil health and grass-fed animals.
The business is privately funded and despite having relatively large numbers of livestock, Mr Killen says it is very difficult to find meat processing that will allow him to build his own brand for Australian consumers.
"It's a very limiting factor, getting the kill spot so you can actually take that risk in market and build a brand out."
Mr Killen, a former chief executive at Australia's largest publicly listed cattle company AACo, said processing was highly competitive and highly constrained for producers trying "to do things differently".
He said 75 per cent of Australian beef was exported and more than 80 per cent of the red meat produced for the domestic market was supplied to supermarkets.
"Programs that are not either aimed around the biggest supermarkets in Australia or the biggest export supply chains, it's very hard to build into that space a smaller program in Australia right now," Mr Killen said.
"It's not as easy as just ringing up and saying, 'Look, I've got 500 head [of cattle] this week I want to be able to process'. I get that the processors need to have a surety of supply, but the spots are very hard to find."
The Australian Meat Industry Council (AMIC) represents abattoir operators, butchers and smallgoods producers.
AMIC chief executive Tim Ryan said there was no issue with producers getting access to slaughter in Australia, and the number of animals being processed was relatively stable.
"If you look into the 1990s, we processed about 7.5 million head of cattle each year on average and likewise between 30 million and 35 million sheep and lambs every year," Mr Ryan said.
National processing volumes for sheep and cattle had remained steady over the past decade, he said.
"We've been roughly following those same numbers, so overall we haven't seen a reduction in capacity, but we do see periods of elevated turn-off or undersupply as we go through changing seasonal conditions.
"Around the country there's about 137 sites that process livestock or at least the vast majority of those livestock on scale."
Typically, most Australian farmers raising livestock sell to a supermarket, feedlot or processor and do not see their produce after it leaves the farm or saleyard.
However, it is difficult to determine how many processors or meatworks offer service kills, which is when an abattoir slaughters an animal and returns the carcass to the producer to be sold at their discretion.
Mr Ryan said the decision to offer service kill was a commercial decision for abattoir operators.
Among those raising the issue is the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), a group of 350 members, about half of whom are farmers.
The organisation is concerned about access to slaughter for livestock.
"Years of vertical integration and consolidation of ownership … has really killed off the regional abattoirs in most states.
"Queensland actually still has the most small-scale abattoirs still servicing local communities, but Victoria, New South Wales, South Australia, Western Australia, we've been just steadily losing all those smaller facilities."
Ms Jonas, a pig and cattle producer, is building a micro-abattoir on her farm near Daylesford in Victoria.
She made the decision to build her own facility when the abattoir she had relied upon for more than a decade was sold and new owners introduced minimum requirements for service kills.
Ms Jonas said it was one of six abattoirs to close or restrict service kills over a four-month period late last year, prompting AFSA to conduct a survey of producers.
Of more than 140 farmers surveyed, almost 80 per cent reported that they had either lost access to an abattoir or expected to lose access soon.
The National Farmers' Federation declined to comment.
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