BARRING a change of government, Australian live sheep exports are set to totally cease in 2028, so ending an important trade for the sheep industry (albeit now confined to Western Australia) but having been plagued by controversy for over forty years.

My perspective on this trade does not relate to the tidal wave of opposition from animal rights activists, the anti-meat lobby and the current Federal Labor Government with its fellow-travellers.

Let me turn the page back to the mid-1980s, when another Labor Government, under Bob Hawke, set up a Senate Committee Inquiry into the trade, which was then booming in Victoria and South Australia, as well as WA.

Then, as now, there was widespread concern over the welfare of sheep during long sea voyages to the Middle East.  There was also vehement opposition from the Australasian Meat Industry Employees Union (AMIEU), which saw the trade as a direct threat to the jobs of its members employed in meat works.

The maverick Victorian secretary of the union, Wally Curran, who seemed to prefer a fight to a feed, was in the vanguard of wild protests and picket lines against the many truckloads of sheep arriving at the wharf in Portland.

There were ugly scenes a-plenty.

As chemist at Hamilton’s then Pastoral Research Institute (PRI), my major role was in laboratory testing of feed quality, and my interest in the Senate Committee Report was sparked by two of its recommendations.

One focused on the need for minimum quality standards of pelleted diets fed to the sheep on the ships, and during the preceding period in feedlots as they became accustomed to the new diet.

The other urged the development of a rapid testing method for pellet quality.

It must be said that in the early stages of the live sheep trade, the nutritional quality of the pellets varied markedly.

Whilst a diet to achieve weight gain was unnecessary for the large wethers exported, a maintenance ration was obligatory.

On occasions, this target was not met, due largely to the roughage component of the pellets being sourced from poor quality hay.

This led to somewhat vigorous discussions between feed mills such as Heywood Stock Feeds (led by local legend, Brian Leyonhjelm), hay suppliers, and my laboratory.

One major problem was that traditional laboratory methods for measuring feed quality were slow and cumbersome.

Demands for more timely test results were gathering pace – and not just from the live sheep trade.

Since the late 1970s, I had been aware of the (then) revolutionary technique of near infrared spectroscopy (NIR), which, properly calibrated, could dramatically reduce turn-around time for analysis.

In Australia, its use had been limited mainly to measurement of protein and moisture in grain, but in 1982 a collaboration between the PRI and the University of Aberdeen, Scotland, had demonstrated that it worked equally well on more complex materials like Australian hay.

However, the major obstacle was the high cost of the appropriate instrument, around $100,000.

My persistent lobbying efforts and research grant applications over the years had gone nowhere.

NIR also seemed to attract a variety of reactions: many considered it to be black magic, whilst some charlatans advocated that it could measure almost anything!

The truth was that everything depended on a robust calibration, based on large numbers of appropriate feed samples with high quality reference data obtained using traditional methods.

As with many computer models, the infallible rule applied: “garbage in equals garbage out.”

The 1985 Senate Report was a landmark event.

Soon afterwards, a group of farmers visited the PRI.

One of them, Gerald Martin, was a producer representative on the then Australian Meat and Livestock Research and Development Corporation (AMLRDC).

Hearing my spiel about the need for NIR, and that my earlier submission to AMLRDC had been declined, he suggested I contact a certain Mr Levy, the then secretary (as I recall) of the Australian Livestock Exporters Association (ALEA), who was based in Melbourne.

That appointment, which lasted only a few minutes, was pivotal to what happened next.

Mr Levy, a decidedly no-nonsense operator, immediately cut to the chase.

“What can you do for us?” he barked.

Rather nervously, I explained the problem, and what I saw as the solution.

“Right,” he said.

“We pay a research levy to AMLRDC of one dollar per sheep on every shipload – and I’m sick and tired of seeing most of those funds going to research cattle tick in Queensland!  I want some of my money back.  Leave it with me.”

That was it – interview ended!

To my amazement, within a few days, I received a phone call from a senior AMLRDC official, who said he thought we could come to some arrangement.

Mr Levy obviously had influence.

That arrangement, to my knowledge, was, and remains unique in the annals of research funding.

AMLRDC, sensing commercial possibilities with the NIR equipment, proposed to lend us – not grant us – $60,000 towards its purchase, with this sum to be repaid over three years.

Of course, this meant that we would have to get serious with a “fee for service” regime for feed analysis, which had been somewhat rare for government departments up to that time.

I still have a copy of an earlier memo from the Agriculture minister authorising us to do so.

However, that still left a funding gap of $40,000, but with AMLRDC stumping up the loan, we soon gained agreement from another research body to grant us $20,000, with the Agriculture Department covering the other $20,000.

From very small beginnings, thus began the ‘FEEDTEST’ service.

The live sheep trade obviously became a major customer, but hay and grain producers and purchasers also quickly swelled the growing demand for objective quality measurements of feedstuffs – with a rapid turnaround – instead of the traditional “sniff and feel” test.

The loan from AMLRDC was repaid on time, and FEEDTEST became known statewide and even nationwide.

With its small but loyal and dedicated staff it also became a self-supporting business, but still government-owned – until, some 20 years later, the Department’s bean-counters, following the zeitgeist of the time, insisted on selling it off.

Today, the FEEDTEST business continues, and the name has entered the lexicon, despite other competing testing services around the country.

At last year’s Sheepvention, which I attended for the first time in years, the FEEDTEST booth was attracting considerable interest.

I noted with satisfaction – and some emotion – that the original logo was still in use, and the staff member on duty was open-mouthed when I told her that my late wife, Helena designed that logo in 1988, during a brain-storming session around our kitchen table.

And the take-home message?

If it had not been for the live sheep trade, FEEDTEST would never have got off the ground.