AMIC executive: Australia can meet EU deforestation rules if given flexibility

Under the regulations, any trader placing commodities on the EU market will have to prove the products do not originate from recently deforested land or have contributed to forest degradation by December 30.

During the Northern ICMJ conference last week, Mr Ryan said meat sector industry bodies were in the process of working through the best way to meet the requirements.

He thought an "Australian approach" to the regulations would be essential, whereby we could look at our existing tools and come up with the best system to meet the outcome.

"The challenge with these regulations are if they're very prescriptive in how we meet the requirements," he said.

Overall, he thought Australia could come to the table if there was flexibility, as essentially we had the right ingredients already in place to navigate the regulation.

"We've got individual animal EID, we've got pretty good rule of law and the right ingredients to at least provide the assurances and demonstrate and verify those to the Europeans," he said.

"I don't think the South Americans necessarily have that level of sophistication in their traceability, particularly Brazil on the deforestation front, so we could potentially get a leg up."

He indicated meeting the regulations within current specifications may pose privacy concerns and challenges for Australia.

"The core elements are that we will need to have some way for beef that wants to enter the EU market to provide GPS coordinates of the plots of land where those animals were raised and finished and for that to be passed along through the supply chain to the exporter then to be passed over to the EU importer and that to be checked by the European regulator," he said.

"The challenge for us I think is that we've probably got the tools to manage the data-piece, but it's the privacy piece and how we can make sure we're actually allowed to be sharing what we are and we're not in breach there."

Mr Ryan said our continued access to a varied overseas market was essential to the continued success of Australian beef, with products exported to over 30 countries each year.

He indicated beef accounted for $11 billion in export sales and $27 billion in industry turnover in FY23.

He said Australia exported the vast majority of its beef products, especially when it came to co-products, such as offal, hide, pharmaceuticals, and rennet products.

"We're a relatively small country, we have a growing population but it's not getting that much bigger that quickly, so when we're looking at growth opportunities a lot of that is orientated towards the export market," he said.

"The ability to increase export returns benefits everyone along the supply chain, if we can get more product for export, that flows all the way down to the producer."

He indicated given Australia's hygienic processing practices and disease-free status, the country had been able to maintain very good export status that few countries around the world enjoyed.

"At the same time the rules are changing somewhat, traditional drivers of food safety and animal health are definitely fundamental for everything, but we're seeing new trade rules, new requirements emerge, either as a country requirement or as a commercial requirement," he said.

"So on the horizon we're seeing a lot more on the sustainability front.

"We're also seeing questions around anti-microbial resistance and animal welfare begin to emerge and sit on top of these traditional requirements for countries.

"Our ability to comply with those, will basically dictate if we can have access to the market, so a lot of work is going on in that space, but also preemptively how we can get in front of these issues and set the rules on our own terms will be really important before they're written on behalf of us," Mr Ryan said.