Giving his thoughts on the discussion around the state of the industry and the mood for change, Mr Petersen said it was important to note farmers did not own a majority of the red-meat processing and exporting sector.
While southern-based co-operatives Silver Fern Farms and Alliance Group were large in sheep meat, collectively their market share was still only 52.7% and in beef they collectively held 39% of market share, he said.
Looking at the options being discussed, including an 80% entity as being advocated by the Meat Industry Excellence group, splitting processing and marketing, and a single marketing entity, among others, Mr Petersen believed none could be delivered easily due to the variety of owners and strategies that existed.
He believed the ''circuit breaker'' that could unlock all those challenges was the adoption of tradable slaughter rights, which was recommended to the then Meat Industry Council by consultancy firm Pappas Carter Evans and Koop nearly 28 years ago.
The adoption of TSRs would ''change behaviour'' overnight. There would be much greater incentive to form relationships and contractual supply arrangements between farmers and meat companies.
Meat exporters would be able to plan their marketing with more certainty, which would give them confidence to form more trusted relationships in the market.
For farmers, TSRs would reduce procurement pressure and competition at the farm gate. Rationalisation of excess capacity would be encouraged, as individual companies would be able to decide on the positioning and level of capacity required to slaughter their allocation under their TSR.
TSRs would encourage meat companies to consider consolidation. Procurement pressure would be reduced across a year and new entrants would still have access to the industry, he said.
The adoption of TSRs would be ''do-able'' and could be applied from the start of the new season. While sovereignty would remain with individual companies in the first instance, the increased certainty provided by TSRs ''would encourage more conversations that could lead to meaningful change''.
Any change must be driven on commercial terms by farmers and meat companies in the first instance, but Beef and Lamb remained ready to assist, if and when a reform package was agreed and in need of further assessment or underpinning analysis on the road to implementation, he said.
