Similarities in sector programmes

Debate continues on whether the new plate-to-pasture red meat programme is reinventing the wheel or an extension of Beef and Lamb New Zealand's central progeny test.

Comparisons have been drawn between the primary growth partnership-funded project between Silver Fern Farms, Landcorp and PGG Wrightson, and the central progeny test work which was started by Alliance Group in 2002 but now run by Beef and Lamb.

There are similarities. Both involve identifying high-performing animals based on traits and using that information to improve the meat productivity of commercial flocks.

They will both look at taste and tenderness testing, but Silver Fern farms chief executive Keith Cooper says that is where the similarities end.

"I'm not bagging the central progeny test, but it is one-eighteenth of our model," he said.

That integrated value chain model consists of seven main projects: the market, a database, genetics, processing phenotype, processing improvement, technology transfer and farm productive capacity, with 18 sub-projects underneath those.

Further differences, he said, were the focus on determining what consumers want and improving productivity inside the farm gate through use of genetics, new forage and management, to supply what those consumers want.

Research into genetics, forage and management, will be packaged through an integrated value chain to supply consumers with those red meat products.