Australian Beef Assoc. plans U.S. speech

AUSTRALIA - ABA's vice chairman, Linda Hewitt, will address the R-CALF USA Annual General Meeting
calendar icon 16 January 2007
clock icon 2 minute read
Relationship between ABA and R-CALF continues to strengthen.

ABA Chairman, Brad Bellinger announced today that ABA's Vice Chair Linda Hewitt will address R-CALF's AGM in Denver, later this week.

He said that the reciprocal relationship between ABA and the massive R-CALF was continuing to strengthen, as both organisations realise that the Global economy allows multi-national processors working across international borders to substantially increase their power. Therefore cattle producer organisations must work together to increase their power and protect their members.

R-CALF is now the dominant US cattle producer organisation with an amazing doubling of membership in the South East of the US in the past year.

R-CALF has paid tribute to ABA for alerting them to the flawed RFID NLIS system, forced onto Australian cattle producers by non-representative Peak Industry Councils. Consequently R-CALF's democratic lobbying has stopped mandatory RFID NLIS in the US and the organisation is now considering support for the adoption of the well proven Australian PIC system.

Brad Bellinger continued, 'Linda Hewitt will address the AGM and hold discussions with R-CALF leadership on
  • Mandatory Country of Origin labelling
  • Maintaining strong border protection, instead of costly and invasive domestic over-regulation to protect the disease status of Australia and US
  • Discuss why US producers are getting 50% more for their calves than Australian producers, despite them having two cases of BSE and being locked out of some markets, no NLIS and drought in some areas.
  • R-Calf is aware of the PwC Report highlighting the many problem areas in the Australian NLIS rollout and Mrs Hewitt anticipates some probing questions on the credibility of the scheme.
'Linda Hewitt will follow on from ABA Directors, John Carter and Athol Economou, who addressed the two previous R-Calf AGMs. Both received standing ovations from the large attendance of cattleman and women from all over the USA', Brad Bellinger stated.

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