Identity preservation inevitable for grain in Australia

May 13, 2002

Ah, acronyms. Just when we¹ve got used to IP as shorthand for Intellectual Property, along comes Simon Warner to tell us there¹s another IP on the way ­ Identity Preservation ­ and the grains industry is going to hear a lot about that, too.

Mr Warner, Grainco Australia general manager ­ supply chain, told a Grains Development Forum in Toowoomba factors driving the Australian grains industry towards Identity Preservation included:

  • government regulation in the areas of food safety and labelling, with Victoria leading the way for the moment,
  • consumer demand, prompted by events like the leaking of Starlink maize into human food products in the United States,
  • the introduction of genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and
  • demand from processors for varietal purity, where they want specific characteristics.


Mr Warner told the forum -­ a QDPI/industry think tank assessing likely future directions in the grains industry ­ that grains increasingly would move away from the traditional system of commodity trading, on the basis of fair average quality, to identity preserved lines guaranteed to meet characteristics demanded by purchasers.

Identity preservation was the maintenance of a parcel of grain¹s identity and characteristics right along the production chain, from seed through growing, harvesting, handling and processing to the point of consumption.

An identity preservation system facilitated the segregation of different parcels of grain ­ otherwise indistinguishable from other parcels ­ and delivered them to an end user.

IP existed already in certain areas ­ organic grain (probably the only one preserving identity right through the total production process), in seed, malting barley, varietal segregation in wheat (a simple form) and in commodity segregation.

Admixtures, on the other hand, were failures of IP systems and had occurred from time to time. Examples included barley in wheat and soybeans in specialty maize.

Mr Warner said there were a number of questions about IP that needed to be answered, including liability ­ who took responsibility for what ­ traceability and obtaining value for the costs involved in the system.

There must be value for all chain participants in IP ­ there was no point if there was no value for everyone involved.

To achieve this, IP must be in response to either regulator or consumer demand. It must be relevant to the output required and not be over engineered, which would only add costs, not value.

A number of quality assurance systems already existed ­ ISO9000, Greatgrain, Graincare ­ which would provide the basis for the on-farm component of an IP system. The challenge for IP would be to fill the gaps and make all systems compatible.

Through the Grains Research & Development Corporation (GRDC), Australian growers and the Federal Government are supporting research by the Victorian company S G Heilbron into identity preservation, in the project Maintaining integrity in the grain value chain ­ beyond commodity.

GRDC news release
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