AUSTRALIA’S trailblazing eating quality grading system Meat Standards Australia celebrated its 20th anniversary this year.
The program has gone from strength to strength, and those at its helm still have very big ambitions for it.
MSA delivered a whopping $152 million in additional farm gate returns in the past financial year.
Meat and Livestock Australia data shows more than 3.1 million cattle and 6.1 million sheep were processed through the MSA program in 2017-18.
For cattle, that was 43 per cent of the national adult slaughter, an increase of 3pc on the previous year, while for sheep it represented 26pc of the national slaughter.
The average over-the-hooks differential for MSA-accredited young cattle over non-MSA was 21 cents a kilogram.
Aside from refrigeration and transport, MSA has changed the beef and sheepmeat trade more than any other development, pioneers of the program said.
But like anything revolutionary, it required a cultural change, a transformation of the thinking of an entire industry, they said.
Today, there is widespread acceptance the consumer is king and quality is the only way Australian beef and lamb can compete on a global stage.
But that wasn’t always the case.
In the days before MSA, most players in the beef world took the view they knew a good cut of meat when they saw it and it was their job to tell consumers what was good and what they wanted.
For one of its architects, Rod Polkinghorne, MSA’s greatest feat is that it delivered “a whole industry which understands the eating quality discussion”.
The constant talk about eating quality was something that happened in Australia long before it did anywhere else in the world, he said.
The beef industry now plans to have 50 per cent of the national cattle slaughter graded under MSA by 2020.
The 2020 compliance goal is 95pc, where compliance now sits around 94.
However, the big one is lifting the MSA index two points nationally.
Meanwhile, there are now more than 150 brands underpinned by MSA, the majority beef.
“MSA is an independent endorsement of brands,” MSA program manager at MLA Sarah Strachan said.
“Brands are getting closer to the consumer, who are looking for a story but also expecting the product to perform to their expectations - this is the way brands can secure that performance.”