IT may be called the Beef Capital of Australia, but you may be hard-pressed to find home-grown and locally killed beef for sale in Rockhampton.
With next month’s Beef Australia a major event on the city’s calendar, retired beef producer Lex Lawrie decided it was time to highlight the situation.
“For some time now there have been no cattle killed for local consumption in the Rockhampton area. It all comes from boxed beef from abattoirs in the south,” he said.
Mr Lawrie said the lack of local beef also eliminated competition from butchers at the nearby Gracemere Saleyards and played into the hands of the large supermarkets.
“All killing facilities were shut down years ago in the name of hygiene. I have been told that it is uneconomical for the large meat works to slaughter smaller numbers of cattle for local butchers.”
Mr Lawrie said the situation was detrimental to the future viability of local butchers. “We do not all wish to purchase our meat from a supermarket.”
The latest casualty is Benmore Beef, which closed its doors permanently after suffering damage from Cyclone Marcia in February.
The business ran its own cattle on a central Queensland property and had its cattle slaughtered locally.
Dave Dwyer, Dwyer Bros Butcher, has been in the business for over 25 years and like other butchers in Rockhampton sources beef from wholesalers in Victoria, Brisbane and Mackay.
“We can’t get them killed anywhere - not locally – both of the local meat works won’t kill for us,” he said.
“The only place we could get a kill was either Biggenden or Monto and the cost of getting them back is okay because there are always trucks coming up, but it was just the cost of getting them down there was too great.”
Up until early last year, butchers had been able to organise private kills with JBS Swift but this had already been scaled back over the years, he said.
Teys Australia does not do local kills and did not respond to Queensland Country Life’s request for an interview.
“When Swift stopped killing, we called our local politicians about it and they didn’t want to know about it. So nobody wanted to know about it.”
Local cattle producers used to organise private kills through Mr Dwyer, where they would send through a load of cattle to the meat works and select a beast for their own consumption.
“The meatworks would kill it and they would transport it back to the shop and we would cut it up for them and they would take it home to their property.
“We can’t even get that done now.”
JBS Australia’s John Berry said there would be local beef available in Rockhampton, but it would be sourced as boxed beef from the company’s wholesaler D R Johnston.
“That is the way purchasing occurs,” he said. “People are buying it in…because it is easy for them and they can get exactly what they are after – for the right price.”
This is the case for local butcher Peter Boodle, who said he buys MSA products from wholesalers throughout the state, as he can specify what grade and what cut of meat he wants.
“We haven’t bought from Gracemere saleyards for five to six years. With customer demand for tenderness, we found it easier to get MSA-graded beef,” Mr Boodle said.
Meanwhile, Mr Berry said it was not easy taking an entire carcase, as there were over 150 cuts and each part had to be sold in order to maximise profits.
Mr Berry said JBS had always processed its own cattle and there had been times when a local butcher would approach them for a local kill, however it was not a service kill facility.
“What a processor does is processing for our own business – we have good long-term relationships with local cattle suppliers who support that Rockhampton business.”
And processing was not a cheap business – it was twice as much as the US, Mr Berry pointed out.
“With hygiene laws and food safety requirements, you can’t put them in a back of truck.”
Former butcher – and now sales representative at the Queensland Country Life – John Thompson said it the change in hygiene laws saw a rapid change in the industry.
“When you consider the heady days of the 1960s, small communities could feed themselves. Now the cost of maintaining a small abattoir is not enough – even if you have 50 kills a week, the cost of wages, production and regulation blows it out,” he said.
Mr Thompson, who worked as a butcher from 1964 through to 1996, said years ago Rockhampton had a Masters Butchers Association and the saleyards was controlled by an abattoir board, with representatives from the local shires and Rockhampton City Council.
“The board would go to Gracemere for the fats sale on Monday and all come down to the meat works by train by Tuesday morning.
“They would unload them, knock them on the head and put then in a cold room and deliver to the butchers on a Wednesday, and the butchers would start cutting up for the weekend trade.”
The board was disbanded when the new health laws were introduced.
