Call for farmers to be more transparent

That was the message from animal handling expert Temple Grandin at the Animal Production Conference in Adelaide this week.

"The consumer has a disconnect with ag but ag also has a disconnect with consumers," she said.

Industry was reluctant to put up her videos showing footage of sheep and cattle abattoirs but they were receiving 80 per cent to 95pc likes.

"We have to start to show stuff, explain stuff and some things we are going to have to change," she said.

"We are going to have to open up the door. It is a new world with the iPhone and the Samsung Galaxy. It's that simple."

Professor Grandin, from Colorado State University, has had a major influence on the positive change in stock handling across the world with more than half the United States feed yards and abattoirs using her design principles.

She said abattoir handling had greatly improved in the past 25 years with 100pc of US beef abattoirs stunning 95pc or more of their cattle with the first shot compared to just 30pc in 1996. To maintain high standards, observable measurements to score animal handling was needed, such as the percentage of animals that fall in handling and the percentage vocalising during time in the squeeze chute.

"Measuring prevents bad from becoming normal," she said.

Many US beef plants had installed CCTV in stunning boxes and it was important this footage was independently audited on a regular basis.

"In supply chain verification it is really important we do what we say and say what we do," she said.

Professor Grandin said good animal stockmanship must be held in higher regard and animals could be acclimatised to handling.

"An animal's first experience with you, the quad bike and yards need to be a good experience because if they have a bad experience they remember it and have a hard time getting past it."

She encouraged individual producers to get down to the animals' height and move through their yards to identify potential distractions.

Professor Grandin stressed the livestock industry must find the "optimal level" of production and cautioned against pushing genetics at the expense of animal welfare.

An area of growing concern was lameness in US beef herds due to poor leg conformation.

"There are certain genetic lines of beef cattle that are repeating a mistake the pig industry made back in the 1980s and early 1990s when they just selected for production traits and ended up with leg conformation issues.

"You can't just use the numbers you have to look at the animals," she said.