Newsletter for the week ending 22 October 2004

Don't forget the Elders Internet Embryo Auction

It's on today at 1.00 pm and includes eight Limousin lots. If you have not registered and would like to bid on some pretty impressive lots, contact sale co-ordinator Tim Bayliss on 0419 788366.

Top Sale at Forbes

The best line up of cows with calves ever to be sold at Forbes (NSW) made record prices at the store cattle sale last Thursday, with cow and calf units making $1650 and PTIC cows selling for $1320. The top priced cows were eight Limousin cows with their third calves at foot aged one to three months of age sold for $1650 to a Goulborn based commercial breeder to add to a 100 head commercial Limousin herd which targets the premium prices for high content Limousins available at the Moss Vale saleyards.

Vendor, Strangelands Pastoral Company also sold the 10 top priced PTIC Limousin cows for $1320 and seven Angus cows with Limousin sired calves at foot for $1400.

To put these prices into perspective, in the 1800 head yarding at Forbes; Angus units sold from $710 to $1470, Herefords made $920 to $1160 and other breeds made mostly $820 to $1320 according to "The Land" report of the sale.

Tobias also has strong sale

There was strong demand at the  Annual Tobias Female sale at Forbes (NSW) on Wednesday with prices topping at $4000. A complete clearance of 21 cows (most with young calves) averaged $2048 and 17 of 25 twelve month old heifers topped at $1350 (twice) and averaged $1040. Ten of the cows were 10 year old cows which averaged $2000. The top priced cow Tobias Foda was bought by volume buyers Charles and Vicky Carmichael for their Timor stud at Coonabarabran who purchased three cows and four heifers including the two top priced heifers at $1350. Gerry Hanning paid $3200 for Tobias Patience for his growing Limousin stud at Crookwell NSW.

Other volume buyers were Phillip Hurrell from Cowra who took home six cows and Scott Elliott from Orange who purchased eight heifers for his newly established stud.

Win for Wondai State School

Junior member, Wondai State School in south east Queensland took out the Champion Carcase in the Wide Bay Hoof & Hook Competition held at Murgon in the South Burnett region of Queensland last week.

Seven Year 8-10 students from the Wondai School competed in Led Steer, Junior Handler, Junior Judges and a Farm Olympics competition. Guest judge, Graham Hopf from Murwillimbah, Northern NSW officiated in the hoof competition and carcass judging was completed by South Burnett Beef at Murgon.

The steer which produced the Champion Carcass 'Capone' was placed  5th in the Medium Heavy Weight Class on the Hoof.   He was a purebred Limousin Steer bred by Talana Limousins, Memerambi, Queensland.

' Toecutter' another purebred Limousin Steer bred by Talana Limousins,placed  2nd Medium Heavy Weight Class on the hoof   and 3rd in it's class on the hook.

"Capone" which beat off 50 steers to take out the Championship weighed 550 kg live and had a 65.58% dressing percentage to produce a 334.5 kg carcase valued at $1170.75. He had an A muscle score, a 122 sq cm eye muscle area, meat colour 1B, and a marble score of 1 with a 5mm fat cover on the rump and 4mm over the ribs.

"Capone" produced a very high yielding carcase with adequate fat cover for a wide range of markets and a demonstration of what purebred Limousin steers can do. Congratulations to the students and staff at Wondai state school. Keep up the good work!

Workshops

Don't forget the member's workshops at Dederang in north east Victoria on Saturday 23 October and Kernot in west Gippsland on Saturday 30 October. The first workshop is being hosted by Hans and Rosemary Bauer 0f the "The Pines" Limousin stud and the second at Bruce and Ann Gill's "Bruangil Park" Limousins and both will commence at 10.00 am.

Shows steers available

Andrew Norton-Knight from Tobias Limousins called to say they have four steers over from a group they have handled for schools to show. They are happy to negotiate a reasonable price but you will need to be quick as well handled Limousin steers suitable for showing are like "gold". Prariewood High School in Sydney are likely to put their name on one of them to prepare for next year's Sydney Royal. The school has exhibited steers from other breeds at Sydney but have decided it needs to be a Limousin this year. Call Andrew on 0424278463 or Tom Edols on 0268 563154

Record sales to Japan but?

Shipments of beef to Japan for the first nine months of this year are a record 288,000 tonnes, worth $1.44 billion largely due to the ban on the import of beef from the United State since late last year due to a single case of BSE. The animal was apparently imported from Canada in a consignment of some 87 Holstein heifers but the officials in the USA have not been able to trace many of the other 86 animals to convince the Japanese that there was no risk of another potentially infected animal entering the food chain. However predictions are that a framework to allow the resumption of imports from the USA to Japan will be announced before the US elections on 2 November. The agreement is likely to require all animals over 20 months to be tested for BSE which will not be a big imposition on the USA where most animals are slaughtered under this age provided they have a way of establishing the age of each animal which will be difficult without a National Identification Scheme. Assuming that the USA can meet the Japanese requirements they will again compete very strongly in the Japanese market which will put pressure on Australian exporters and price.

The Case is Compelling

I have it on very good authority that in the last month there has been "an incident" in Japan with beef imported from Australia which could have had a serious impact on our exports to that country if the source of the problem had not been traced very rapidly to a single beef producer in the Gippsland region of Victoria. The rapid tracing was facilitated by the fact that the cattle had NLIS tags in their ears when they were sent for slaughter and the processor had aligned this identification with the "offending" box of beef.

Luckily, Victoria is ahead of the other states in implementing NLIS so the sooner NLIS is fully implemented in the other states the better. The quick resolution of this incident kept it out of the press and may have saved the processor concerned and the Australian beef industry millions of dollars because their was no disruption to this vital trade and no damage to the consumer image of Australian beef in Japan and Australia. The case for the implementation of NLIS is compelling and urgent.

Yours in "clean and green" Limousin beef

Alex McDonald