THE importance of animal welfare in the context of sustainability and longevity of the beef industry was also looked at last week's Harvey Beef Gate 2 Plate Challenge Field Day in a presentation by Harvest Road animal welfare program manager Taya Clarke.
Ms Clarke said sustainability was built around the three pillars of environment, social and governance, and animal welfare sat under the social section.
"Maintaining our social license when it comes to beef production is crucial to the sustainability of the industry," Ms Clarke said.
"Losing our social license will make our ability to operate in the future very challenging and we won't be able to hide behind standards and guidelines if we lose it.
"Consumers want to know more and more about what we are doing and why we are doing it.
"It only takes one poor operator or event to cause an issue."
During the presentation Ms Clarke also looked at what animal welfare is, what good animal welfare looks like, how it can be measured and how science is ever evolving in this area.
Ms Clarke finished her presentation by saying animal welfare was complex and diverse but very important to the industry.
"There are four reasons it is important," she said.
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"The first is consumers want it and we need to meet their expectations, while the second is for the sustainability of the industry as we need our social license to operate.
'Thirdly is for continuous improvement in terms of positive experiences in industry and lastly for the animal, in terms of systems for the animal and not animals for the system.
"We need to remember that there are real implications for animal welfare especially when it comes to social license, quality of product and quality of an animal's life."
