Program improves feedback on cattle

THE ability to benchmark the performance of cattle against the best in the country is now available for producers involved in the Meat Standards Australia program.

The new MSA online benchmarking tool is available through mymsa.com.au and provides producers with the opportunity to benchmark their cattle’s compliance and index results against other producers in their region, state or across the country.

MSA program manager Sarah Strachan said the new tool provided producers with a more complete picture, beyond feedback on their own individual business performance.

“Benchmarking allows producers to see if they are matching, lagging or exceeding industry averages for MSA performance,” Ms Strachan said.

“The ability for producers to localise their performance and measure their compliance against data from their own region is a significant feature of the new tool.

“Producers will be able to compare themselves to others in their own region, allowing them to really gauge the performance of cattle within the context of their local conditions, which will provide them with far more meaningful feedback.”

The new tool will also provide producers with the ability to break down benchmarking by feed type and HGP (hormonal growth promotant) status, providing producers with the ability to get more meaningful feedback about their own enterprise and performance.

The MSA benchmarking feature is an extension of the 2015 Australian Beef Eating Quality Audit, which established a baseline for beef eating quality based on MSA grading results for more than 3.2 million cattle from the 2014–15 financial year.

Producers can access the new benchmarking tool through their myMSA account.

For more information, email msaenquiries@mla.com.au.