LONG time Wellard client and Indonesia’s largest cattle breeder and importer, PT Santosa Agrindo (Santori), has celebrated a landmark milestone in the adoption of Australia’s Exporter Supply Chain Assurance System (ESCAS), with the 50,000th animal passing through its ESCAS supply chain.
A statement issued by Wellard this morning says the supply chain and monitoring system established by Santori is without peer, enabling Santori to identify the individual animal, its owner, its exporter (Wellard) and even the trucking operator that transported the steer from ship to feedlot and feedlot to abattoir.
The Santori system is equivalent too, or better than, many feedlot and abattoir information systems in Australia, and is more rigorous than the traceability systems regulatory authorities require from cattle supply chains in Australia.
Wellard South East Asia general manager Scot Braithwaite said Santori deserved tremendous credit for the way it had embraced ESCAS.
“Santori’s feedlot and abattoir infrastructure was already very good, but the systems and monitoring it now has in place is world-class. It is a real ESCAS-plus model and reflective of the professionalism of Santori’s management, employees and operations,” Mr Braithwaite said.
“The 50,000th ESCAS animal is a world first in a first class system.”
In addition to supplying Santori with livestock on its modern shipping fleet, Wellard assists with data provision in a format that complements the Santori Management Information System (MIS).
In a validation of how powerful the company’s MIS is, Santori Procurement and Welfare Manager Charles Mok demonstrated how he could use a combination of animal records and CCTV to bring up real time vision of the steer’s feedlot pen on a monitor in the Santori head office 250 kilometres from the feedlot itself.
Santori has invested more than $800,000 to get the system up and running.
“This is an investment in the sustainability of the live cattle trade between Australia and Indonesia and we hope it will help re-establish the public’s confidence in the high standard of welfare for animals exported from Australia,” Mr Braithwaite said.
The 50,000th steer was 341kg Brahman cross steer from the Australian Agricultural Co’s Brunette Downs. It was transported on board Wellard’s MV Ocean Drover to the port of Panjang on the island of Sumatra.
By the time it was processed after 120 days on feed, Santori had acquired 43 different fields of data for the steer, including NLIS number, vendor, exporter feedlot entry weight, fat score, abattoir number, and carcase yield.
