Quality Assurance is key to economic prosperity

Maximising exports and minimising imports is a key to economic prosperity but quality assurance (QA) is rapidly becoming the battleground on which the economic contribution of a country's agricultural production, especially exports, will stand or fall.

A number of significant QA trade wars have already been fought, some are still in progress and we can be quite sure that more are to come. Brazil is one of the transitional economy countries that has already recognised the growing economic importance of QA and hosted a major international conference on the subject. Also, an international textbook on QA has appeared, edited by Dr. John Hodges of FAO and Professor In Han of Seoul National University. Entitled Livestock, Ethics and Quality of Life this multi-author treatise focuses on the expectations of animal product consumers in terms of "availability, price, safety and quality".

A classic example of QA dynamics is the decade-long struggle of the genetically-disadvantaged Australian pork industry to exclude cheap imports from the progressive and thriving Canadian pig industry. Geographic isolation, coupled with a very strict quarantine for imported livestock, has kept Australia free from some of the new diseases that have spread alarmingly in the more geographically connected countries of the world in recent years. The downside of having an isolated geographical position and strict quarantine is that genetic progress can lag behind the rest of the world. Superior genetics has consistently enabled Canada to produce pork more economically and more in line with modern consumer preference, but it has suffered from emerging viruses such as circovirus. The Australian industry has repeatedly sought to exclude Canadian imports on the grounds of disease risk, but Canada has successfully countered calls for a ban on their product by generating QA data to prove that, despite infection of production farms, their exported pork is free of viruses that might infect Australia.

Infectious agents are not the only aspect of animal product QA which has become important. Increasingly, consumers also want assurances that there are no significant drug, pesticide or pollution residues, particularly since last year's scandals involving dioxin contamination of meat. Also in 2000, there was a contentious European Union (EU) ban on imports of beef from the USA, which arose (and threatened a trade crisis) as a result of new EU legislation banning hormonal growth promoters. The lesson seems to be that it is vital to keep a sharp eye on legislative developments in potential export markets and to be ready with scientific data to provide assurance that exported meat will not contravene rising standards in the importing country.

Animal welfare standards are becoming yet another important aspect of QA. Early indications of this trend were seen a decade ago as consumer concerns rose about fisheries products that might compromise conservation and welfare of dolphins and whales. Now welfare of farm animals is a significant consumer concern in many countries. Pioneering EU welfare legislation has already created international tension about the implications for free trade. More countries are expected to follow the EU in imposing animal welfare standards for home production and this might lead to restriction of imports that do not conform to home welfare criteria.

International debate about whether a country's QA standards should be allowed to restrict imports is continuing. In the case of verifiable disease introduction risks or consumer health risks, import bans are widely recognised as justified. Restriction of trade is more contentious because of differences in animal welfare standards, and international agreement does not seem imminent. However, the QA battleground extends well beyond international trade agreements. If QA activists and home meat producers cannot have their way in restricting imports, they can take the battle directly to consumers in the market place. We have seen an example of this in connection with a 1999 United Kingdom ban on total confinement housing (sow stalls and tethers) for pigs during pregnancy. UK farmers were outraged to find that they faced increased costs to comply with the higher welfare standards imposed while imported pork could be produced by cheaper production systems that were no longer permitted in the UK. Appeals to government and the EU about the unfairness of this situation were of no avail, so desperate UK pork producers took the battle to the media with a devastating, vitriolic newspaper campaign warning consumers of the welfare outrages that they might be supporting if they purchased pigmeat products that were not branded as produced in the UK. It seems that the old saying "the customer is king" still applies and if the customer wants a quality assured product, which increasingly they do, then someone somewhere is going to have to meet that demand. Other producers will fall by the wayside.

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