SAY something often enough and people will eventually start believing it.
It's a widely understood phenomenon that applies to the current lobby process which is pushing to see radical reforms applied to the way beef is described and graded in Australia.
Letters to the editor in Rural Press publications last week suggest that some readers are now convinced that earlier claims made by Sydney lobbyist, Norman Hunt, and NSW parliamentarian Richard Torbay are, in fact, true.
Among the alarming 'facts' raised by Mr Hunt are that 30 percent of all table beef sold on the domestic retail market is derived from old cow, and that the 'budget' meat sold by major supermarket groups Coles and Woolworths is derived from old cow.
Some of these claims have since been taken up in articles in mainstream metropolitan press as accepted fact. It's not hard to find flaws in this claim.
In the case of Woolworths, the cattle the company pro-cesses itself at the Ipswich/Brismeat boning operation for its 'everyday' beef offer are mostly milk-tooth, with a very small proportion of two-tooths.
In the case of meat marketed under the 'economy' category, sourced from outside processors like Swift and Teys, the company prescribes a set of specifications based on dentition - mostly four-tooth (YP and YPS AusMeat ciphers), and absolutely no more than seven-tooth (PR and PRS ciphers), depending on the cut and its purpose.
A second layer of criteria cover fat and meat colour, delivering an even higher spec within the PR and PRS codes.
In no way could beef from a seven-tooth female, likely to be no more than 36-40 months of age, be aligned with the descriptor 'old cow', which describes animals that are liquidated after completing their function as breeders.
In fact, seven-tooth cow can legitimately be packed in grassfed Jap ox carton, provided weight and other criteria are met.
"The company has never bought eight-tooth cow meat, at least as far back as 2001, if ever," said one veteran Woolworths staff member this week.
While details from Coles were harder to obtain, sources inside the company indicated a similar policy applied to the supply of meat sold as budget lines through Coles stores.
In combination, the major supermarket players represent 63pc of retail beef sales in Australia. That leaves the remaining 37pc of retail sales to be divided between independent butchers (29pc) and delicatessens, farmers markets and others (8pc). Are they responsible for the 30pc of beef sold at retail within Australia being from old cows?
Based on the assumption that full-mouth 'cow meat' is more likely to be sold in high-volume, low-margin retail business models, QCL rang some of the best-known examples in South East Queensland.
It could find no evidence of the AusMeat budget ciphers 'ox, cow, manufacturing' being used in any store canvassed.
At Bedrock Beef and the Meat Warehouse, two large-scale, high-turnover retail outlets at Loganholme and Yatala, principal Chris Masterson said he sold no old cow meat as part of his budget retail offering, which was A-cipher beef or better, with specific criteria applied on meat and fat colour.
"Any manufacturing grade beef from old cow that we buy is only for mince or sausages," he said.
Another of Queensland's largest independent retailers, Brad Patton, said he was annoyed about the suggestions that low-grade manufacturing cow meat was being sold in volume through the retail sector.
"We knew this crazy claim about old cow beef was coming, and we've developed our own meat grading system to counter the myths out there," he said.
"We don't use any manufacturing grades at all. Our lowest line, which we call budget, is sourced from Swift, mostly closely specified A-cipher product which is expertly processed, and there's nothing wrong with it at all - certainly a long way removed from what could be described as old cow meat. Budget meat today is far removed from what might have been sold as budget 10 or 15 years ago," Mr Patton said.
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