ALTA Food and Agriculture chief executive officer Dr Michael Patching joins the Australian Ag Podcast

Despite the resumption of the live export trade with Indonesia, changing meat buying patterns could see a different pressure on the industry. Hear the latest.

The resumption of the live export trade with Indonesia and Malaysia may only solve some of the challenges for the northern Australian cattle industry.

Australian and Indonesian authorities met in Indonesia late last week, and the resumption of the trade was announced at the weekend. It had been suspended when lumpy skin disease was found in Australian cattle in Indonesia.

But the details of how the trade will resume are yet to be released, in terms of what new checks will be necessary and who will pay for it.

Even with the full resumption of trade, ALTA Food and Agriculture chief executive officer Dr Michael Patching told the Australian Ag Podcast the changing meat buying patterns of countries such as Indonesia and Vietnam could see further pressure on live export.

“The LSD issue highlighted our reliance of the northern cattle industry to some specific markets, mainly Indonesia,” Dr Patching said.

”Since Covid, we’re seeing it both in Indonesia and Vietnam, that there’s been a change in a bit of the dynamics with consumer behaviours, and a bit of a shift towards frozen products.”

The lift in frozen meat sales to some traditional destinations for live export cattle was softening demand.

ALTA Food and Agriculture chief executive Dr Michael Patching.

This was especially the case in Vietnam, where Singapore-based Dr Patching said demand had “dropped off a whole lot”, which then put pressure back onto to Indonesia to take more of the share of live export from Australia.

“It’s really important to recognise that there is a shift happening in the markets in south-east Asia,” he said.

“The reason that we’re really supplying these all these south-east Asia or developing country markets is because there is a traditional or a very strong wet market aspect, which means they’re going and buying their meat on a daily basis.

“And that isn’t because of a refrigeration issue – it’s just because they like going down to the wet market to buy their meat in the way that they’re used to it, and meeting with their friends.”

Covid had changed this, and now consumers in many of those countries had found alternate ways to source beef including frozen meat, which had a longer shelf life and the ability to purchase specific cuts.

”Frozen product has significant advantages when it’s imported, and it’s now penetrated into these traditional markets that used to have to be 100 per cent reliant on importing or using locally processed meat in the past,” Dr Patching said.

Some countries are now importing more frozen beef, putting pressure on live export.

While it was good news for the live export industry that the most recent suspensions had been lifted, Dr Patching said consumer preferences could see a shift in the market.

“We need to be proactive in understanding that this isn’t a 2011 incident (when cruelty claims in Indonesia caused the federal government to ban live export to Indonesia) that we’ve now solved the problem for and live export will be okay again,” he said.