In advertisements placed this week in Rural Press newspapers, Bindaree Beef claims producers pay $10 a head in levies and that only 50c per $10 is spent on domestic promotion.

However, according to Meat and Livestock Australia $4.58 of the $5/head cattle transaction levy goes to MLA for marketing and research purposes.

On a national average, animals are traded 1.6 times, meaning that MLA's income from each beast is about $7.30, not $10, as quoted by Bindaree Beef.

MLA marketing general manager David Thomason also refuted the claims on the amount spent on domestic marketing.

He said a simple analysis of figures in MLA's publicly available plans show that $15.8m is spent on domestic marketing each year which represents 24 per cent of overall cattle levy dollars and 31pc of cattle levy marketing expenditure.

Bindaree Beef claims some $80m is collected in levies, almost $17m more than the actual figure.

Mr Thomason said the beef industry operated in a global market and that promotion in key markets was essential to drive overall demand for Australian beef and cattle.

"Every market provides important challenges but so too many opportunities," Mr Thomason said.

"Success in meeting those benefits every cattle producer through their livestock prices, whether they're supplying that particular market or not."

Mr Thomason said MLA was focused on tackling some major challenges in the domestic marketing arena this year, in particular the ongoing attacks by environmental activists on the beef industry's supposed impact on the environment.

As an example he cited research funded by cattle producer levies now demonstrates figures claimed that beef uses 100,000 litres of water to produce 1kg of beef were incorrect and was actually as low as 27 litres.

More balanced coverage in metropolitan media was occurring now as producer funded research was demonstrating the facts about the issue, he said.