Maintaining research
THE sheep industry has been assured programs and technology produced by the Co-operative Research Centre for Sheep Industry Innovation won’t be lost after the organisation’s closure in June this year.
Speaking at the final Sheep CRC conference in Dubbo, NSW, last week, Meat and Livestock Australia’s general manager of producer consultation and adoption Mick Crowley said a “successful transition postCRC was number one”.
MLA will be taking over the genetics and carcass products and intellectual property from the Sheep CRC, including the genomics databases such as Lambplan and Merinoselect, and objective carcass measurement technology.
Mr Crowley said they wanted to make sure they continued uninterrupted for genotype services. While MLA would not be “stepping into a commercial space of offering genotyping services”, it would maintain and implement the databases “so we can have a single source of truth”.
“I’m looking at this to see how we get value out of this in the commercial sector,” he said.
“We are trying to double the annual rate of genetic gain by 2022, and the only way we will do that is to move and value genetics in the commercial space.”
Mr Crowley said the eating quality programs were consumer driven.
“Our consumer insights will translate back into brand specifications and you will start to see over time better price signals flowing back through the supply chain to produce the right animals. We need to take it all the way back to our production systems to make the right genetic selection decisions, backed up by data.”
While Mr Crowley said the industry had come a long way on eating quality – with 26 per cent of lamb produced now presented for Meat Standards Australia grading and 31,000 producers registered – they could do a lot more.
“The cuts-based (MSA) model will be a gamechanger,” he said.
“We can identify that premium product and capture more value from it … and identify those consumers around the world who are willing to pay more for it.”
Mr Crowley said objective carcass measurement technology had been happening under the Rural Research and Development for Profit program and there was a “remit to access further funds”.
“If that’s not successful, given the need and demand for objective measurement technology by industry, we will find the money.
“We will make sure that we do.”