LAMBEX 2024 will release full results from its inaugural feedlot competition to entrants, with entry breed identified, but not their owner’s identity.

And despite comparable competitions, such as at Beef 2024, where owner identities and full entry carcase results were made public, it is unclear whether this will be a characteristic of the lamb feedlot event in the future.

Several sections of the LambEx AMPC Feedlot Carcase Competition were won by Merino and Merino-cross entries, but carcase and wool quality results for even the winning lamb consignments have not been made available even to the entrants.

LambEx chairman Jason Schultz said the full carcase and wool results of all competition consignments will only be released to the entrants, with entrant identities coded or ‘de-identified’, but the breed of each entry listed.

“Half the reason is that a lot of people think that Merinos were the breed of choice for the competition, but once the results get seen by the producers, they will realise that there is a scattering of breeds right throughout the results.

“It wasn’t the breed per se, but the breeders that were successful.”

Mr Schultz said he didn’t think there was anything to gain as an industry in releasing the full results publicly and identifying the entrants.

“The actual producers will learn a lot as to where they sit, but I think if it goes out the public I think lots of people will draw conclusions.

“As I said I think it is more important to hero those who did well and find out the story behind why they did well and what is it that made their lambs the top performing – that’s the real story from my end.”

When asked if the full results were not release to so as to protect the intellectual property and credibility of some studs, Mr Schultz this was “not a reason.”

“But there are lots of good producers that have entered this competition and they should feel comfortable to be able to do that year in year out without having any concerns about someone misconstruing their results.

“Those that entered the competition aren’t the average producers; they all felt they had lambs that potentially, had what it takes to be crowned the top performing lambs in Australia,” he said.

“With that though we’ve captured 30-odd lots from top-end producers, but there is still going to be a first and last in the competition, so we’ve got to be mindful of that.

“It was never in our agenda to become a breed versus breed competition – I just think it’s dangerous,” he said.

“The whole reason for Meat Standards Australia grading is to actually try to identify great carcases regardless of breed.”

He said with the sheep industry starting afresh in eating quality assessment, hopefully the branding will be more around quality rather than breed per se. He said the Merino lambs that did well in the competition came from breeders who have been focusing on carcase traits.

“Funnily enough there some (Merino) producers in the competition that haven’t been focusing on that (carcase), they’ve been more wool focused, and with the antagonistic nature of wool versus carcase, they obviously didn’t perform so well on the carcase front.

“Good Merinos deserve to be paid the same price as any other good lambs.”

When asked what he thought the lack of release of full results reflected about the competition organisers in the context of the industry discussion about the lack of lamb carcase feedback from processors to producers, Mr Schultz said: “I don’t think it says much at all.”

“If and when, and I’m pretty sure after LambEx, there will be a bit of conversation among processors about this, individual producers hope they will get their feedback.”

Mr Schultz said beef producers can get their feedback through MyMSA, but this also is not in the public domain, but accessible by each producer.

He could not comment on whether the lamb competition might some day publish full results, but he is hoping the event will continue attached to LambEx.

“That will be up to the new committee.

“I think there is definitely an appetite for a lamb competition,” he said.

“I would like to think that our lamb competition has more commercial relevance than some of the beef competitions that have been running, because it is with a number of lambs, not individual lambs.

“I think that is a really good reflection on how the entrants’ flocks are performing because it takes the average rather than highlighting individual performance,” he said.

Industry can learn from transparency

LambEx speaker and Rural Analytics director Dr Alex Ball sits on the Beef 2024 carcase competition committee did not know the entry terms and conditions of lamb feedlot competition, so couldn’t comment on whether the full results should be released.

However, he said “ultimately, the more transparent we are in the future, with providing information that accelerates change across industry the better we are going to be.”

“And part of that acceleration will be to provide information that allows both the participants of future carcase competitions and also other stakeholders to really identify which are the appropriate management systems and breeds that are going to drive future compliance with high quality markets.”

Dr Ball said for a long time it has been known that well-managed high-performance Merinos will compete very effectively in modern carcase competition, “particularly when they have eating quality attributes added to them.”

“The challenge will always be the variation within breed is greater than the variation between breeds.

“That’s why it is really good to identify not only the breeds, but what management practices sit behind those results so all of industry can actually work out how they are going to optimize eating quality and carcase quality in the future.”

Dr Ball said entrants to a number of beef carcase and paddock to plate competitions know that they are going to be identified and with their results released publicly.

“The old adage ‘ you can only improve what you measure is very important’, so the more transparent we can be with information that has high integrity and high quality measurements such as that particular (LambEx) carcass competition.

“That’s the first time we’ve had really good well-managed and significant teams of animals (lambs) going into a feedlot and then being killed, managed and processed through one facility so we’ve got really good and accurate comparisons,” he said.

“If we do that more and more I think the industry will benefit from that transparent display of information.”

Results issue needed to be revisited

Winner of the competition’s top lamb producer award Ricky Luhrs said he believed organisers were protecting the IP of stud entries, “so we were all well aware that the only announcements would be the successful winners.”

Even if he had not won in the competition Mr Luhrs said he would have still been happy to have his full carcase results released because his lambs were up against a lot of meat breeds “and no-one expected a Merino to win a feedlot competition.”

Mr Luhrs said there was a clear component of meat sheep stud entries in the competition.

“I think LambEx was doing a quality service for them by protecting their IP and basically if they failed, they weren’t wrecking their credibility.

“So that was why they decided from the start not to release the information.”

In the long term, he believed this issue needed to be revisited.

“I think they could release the data in some sort of way of just breed, with no name, no business beside it and give some sort of graph showing how breeds performed.

“That’s all it needs, breed A, B, C, this is how they performed this is where they stuck,” he said.

“But the important thing is we’ve got the data there; it’s not going to go anywhere.”

“This meat game is so fickle and there is so much of this looking after people’s reputation, but the important thing is now, on a commercial scale, we have data there now.

“We will work on getting it released in some aspect; it’s got to be beneficial.”

Mr Luhrs said University of New England associate professor Dr Peter McGilchrist in his presentation highlighted how important it is to select sires in the higher percentile for eating quality traits.

“We don’t want those bottom 20 percent because they are going to wreck the lamb industry.

“He said clearly the industry needs to move up to this corner of the graph as Peter McGilchrist said and now they’ve got this powerful data that says which animals do it …. they should release and say this is the type of animal we should use,” he said.

“And now they’ve got this big pool of data that says which animals do it.”

The winner of highest MSA sheepmeat index lamb team in the competition was the Barooka Trading Trust and co-principal Deane Goode this week said not having the full results after the competition winners were announced “was a bit ordinary.”

He said the results, including photographs of the winning entry’s carcases and loins, were needed to help counter the myth and industry comments that Merinos had lower quality carcases with smaller loins.

By not releasing the full results, the competition organisers were not leveraging their full value to the industry, he said.