DAFWA Sheep industry data project

Summary

GHD and Artis Group were engaged by the Department of Agriculture and Food Western Australia (DAFWA) and MLA to scope the system needs to interconnect information across the value chain in the Western Australia sheep meat industry.

Information systems used within the sheep meat industry are many and varied. Examples include flock recording systems, vendor declarations, carcass feedback systems, saleyard reports, and retailer inventories.

These systems in the main operate independently of each other even though information may be common across systems in some way. Electronic data recording and web access offers the opportunity to interconnect systems more easily than was possible previously and to do this across the length of the value chain where appropriate. Potential advantages of doing this are improved efficiencies, reduced costs and better outcomes for the industry as a whole. Potential downfalls of not interconnecting are duplication and poor use of data.

The purpose of this study is to identify the best and most appropriate system that will serve as a platform to interconnect information sources within the sheep meat value chain for the betterment of the WA sheep meat industry as a whole.