Telling beef's story doesn't require reams of data: Angus conference

This was the consensus among presenters and panelists at this month's National Angus Conference in Tamworth, when the topic of 'telling our story' came up - as it usually does at beef industry conferences.

Western Australia producer Chris Metcalfe said bridging the gap between consumers and producers, and country and city people, was one of the big challenges the beef industry faced.

It was on farmers to do that work, he felt.

The Metcalfe farm is one of the 'faces' on Woolworths beef packaging.

"We have vegans in WA who run around doing crazy stuff in the name of promoting ag in a bad light. We need faces of our industry to counter that," Mr Metcalfe said.

He pointed to the Livestock Collective as an organisation that was doing a great job on that in the live-ex space.

"When city people want to come to our farm, we're often nervous about that at first," he said.

"But 100 per cent of the time their reaction is positive. They love everything to do with the farm and want to know more, and when they find out we sell beef to Woolies they can't wait to go in there and buy it with dad's mug on the packaging.

"What they really like is the story behind it. If you have animal health and sustainability down pat then the story comes into it. They like to know a family has put love into the meat going on their plate."

His on-the-ground observations were backed by Meat & Livestock Australia's managing director Jason Strong, who said his organisation regularly fields questions from producers around what they can do to tell beef's story in the community.

He said the beef industry was arguably over-sensitive to the anti-meat brigade.

"We hear somebody talking about becoming a vegan and we feel like it is all running against us," he said.

"In reality, only about 4 per cent of people are genuinely vegan.

"We whip ourselves into a frenzy about them, but engaging with them gives them more credibility than they could ever earn themselves.

"There is much more value in talking to the majority of the population - those who have a positive view about farmers and the way we do things."

Mr Strong told the conference an entertaining story about his experience at this year's Sydney Royal Show, with the moral being producers don't need masses of information and data.

MLA had a stand at the show, packed with answers to any question about beef production and sustainability a person might have.

A family was coming along the path and about to enter the stand, when their youngster spotted live animals across the road, shrieked 'sheep' and the whole family sped off.

"I took a few things from that," Mr Strong said.

"Their interest in live animals is intense and they didn't turn up at the show wondering about the sustainability credentials of the red meat industry and where they could go to learn about that.

"But the more telling thing was how low the education base was because the 'sheep' were actually camels.

"We were well prepared with reams of data and scientific information about animal health and welfare but really, the message we have to deliver, is just that we look after our cows and our farms well."

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