In an interim report on Meat Marketing, the Senate Rural and Regional Affairs committee has recommended Minister for Agriculture, Tony Burke, work with his State counterparts to harmonise national standards for all domestic meat slaughtering and processing establishments.

From the evidence gathered through the inquiry so far, the committee has also recommended the Government and State Ministers carefully consider the West Australian standard as the model for national harmonisation, including the way it handles compliance and enforcement issues.

It says regardless of the model adopted though, the harmonised national standard must continue to use dentition to classify the age of sheep as lamb, hogget or mutton, and says all animals classified as lamb must be identified at slaughter.

The report says the committee heard concerns about substitution of hogget and young sheep for lamb have been noted "for many years" by individual producers, processors and industry bodies.

It found the commercial advantages of substitution were significant.

One submission mentioned in the report noted that in the processing stage, the commercial advantage that would accrue to a wholesale processor if he substituted 20pc out of a 2000 kill, the weight and skin value would be equal to $60,000.

The report says the committee found substitution was not widespread throughout Australia, but was nonetheless a legitimate concern to the industry.

The report also acknowledged substitution or mis-description was hard to prove.