Beef Cattle Code of Practice - Progress Updates

August, 2024

First meeting – June 5 and 6, 2024 

Prior to this inaugural meeting, the Code Committee attended an online webinar covering the main aspects of the Code Development Process. The June face-to-face meeting followed soon after and was attended by both the Code Committee and Scientific Committee. This busy, two-day meeting had a varied format including roundtable discussions, presentations, and small-group breakout sessions. Committee members got to know each other through detailed introductions and discussed the main themes from a recent online survey that captured top-of-mind welfare topics for beef cattle (a summary of the survey input is available here).

Other highlights of the meeting included an overview of the beef cattle industry today along with the main strategies to ensure uptake and awareness of the current beef cattle Code of Practice. Building on a review of the principles of consensus, participants developed a shared purpose statement that will serve to guide their work together. Lastly, a list of priority welfare issues was agreed to (available here). These topics will form the basis of the Scientific Committee’s research report (the 2012 report is available here).

In advance of the next face-to-face meeting, the Code Committee (and subgroups of that committee) will have a series of online meetings to begin working on updated draft sections of the Code. The Scientific Committee will begin its review of research on the priority welfare issues.