Will radio frequency digital tracking technology come to the rescue of Australian live cattle exports to Indonesia? National Party leader leader Warren Truss thinks it could be up and running in a matter of days to provide accountability for exporters and the government.

Discussions over the resumption of live exports to Indonesia centre on the ability to establish the traceability of livestock, following a 60 Minutes expose of the mistreatment of cattle by certain slaughterhouses in that country.

RFID tracking of cattle in Australia became compulsory in 2005 following the Mad Dow disease scare. Cattle producers are responsible for fitting tags on cattle while the Meat & Livestock Authority (MLA) maintains a national database.

Tags are attached to the cattle and data is recorded as they are shipped between properties, then on to feedlots and abattoirs, so in the event of a disease outbreak the point of origin will be traceable.

The exception to this rule is cattle from properties in Northern Territory and WA that are destined for live export directly from the property of birth. However many of these properties have the infrastructure in place to tag cattle destined for live export, as they must have the flexibility to deliver within Australia if required.

There were half a million live cattle exported to Indonesia in 2010.

Industry experts believe the extension of the National Livestock Identification System to Indonesia would be a simple matter. Once the cattle arrive in Indonesian ports they can be scanned on leaving the boat. Many feedlots are owned by multinationals and already have the necessary RFID scanning infrastructure.

It is once the cattle move past the feedlot in Indonesia that the environment changes markedly. In that country, the reach of refrigeration is not near as extensive. So the idea of processing meat centrally in large easily monitored abattoirs, and then shipping the meat by refrigerated truck is not viable,. Many of the cattle go to small local slaughterhouses that deliver their product live each day to local restaurants without any refrigeration.

While these small facilities would be able to record the RFID data with handheld scanners, they would need an Internet connection to upload the data.

Support for Australia’s National Livestock Identification Scheme is not universal. Australian Beef Association Chairman, Brad Bellinger is a vocal critic.

“Australia's database has more than 34% of cattle now missing from the database and much of the Northern Territory producers are not even required to use it after five years of its mandatory introduction for the rest of Australian producers. No other Pacific Rim country is even thinking of using our flawed system,” he said.

A report commissioned by the ABA two years ago found that despite Australian Cattle Producers spending $370 million on tags and reading charges with a further $40 million invested by State and Federal Governments, 34.4% of cattle were untraceable.

Mr Bellinger noted at the time, “We have gone backwards with individual RFID. The old system used tail tags, which were much less expensive and actually more effective. The PIC and an individual animal number were on every tailtag in Australia, but the information was never utilised.

Over the past decade Australia has exported more than 5 million live cattle to Indonesia worth more than A$2billion.

Mr Bellinger stated, 'Livecorp, Meat and Livestock Australia and the Federal Government have been fully aware of the animal cruelty issues identified on ABC's 4 Corners for more than a decade. Livecorp and MLA have a mandate from cattle producers and millions of dollars from the compulsory cattle levy to manage and resolve this issue.'

“Coalition talk of resumption in days and the use of NLIS in Indonesia when it was not even in place throughout the Northern Territory was a recipe for permanent closure of the market. NLIS is not working effectively anywhere in the World.”

He said that Australia could not risk another Four Corners expose and that the only answer is the complete quarantining of a small, rigidly controlled accreditation pathway to Indonesian feedlots and abattoirs.