Beef Producers NVD Forms

Joe Hill's Angus cattle sale

The contamination of cattle is Joe Hill’s primary concern about CSG. A National Vendor Declaration form (NVD) is filled out by beef producers whenever they sell stock. Question five of the form asks ‘if in the past six months any of these animals have been on a property listed on the ERP database or placed under any restrictions due to chemical residues.’ The explanatory notes say ‘that if you don’t know you must tick yes’ and then nobody will bid on your cattle.

Joe’s concern is that his neighbour is irrigating with RO water and it has twice migrated onto his property, first in a flood and recently when a dam blew out. Other landholders are running beef cattle and have CSG extraction on their properties. If anyone says no to question five and the cattle are found to be contaminated, Joe believes that they will be liable even though they may not have been informed of a spill or any other contamination problem. No government body has confirmed or denied this despite him asking them many times.

 ‘If you sign a Statutory Declaration and it’s not true you’re liable and it’s a jailable offence,’ said Joe. ‘Before I started objecting to CSG I brought this up at a public meeting at Cameby Hall in September 2009. Syntec were drilling on people’s places and we didn’t know what chemicals they were using, or spilling, or leaving about. I thought that they were putting our business in jeopardy by being on our properties and it was a pretty dangerous situation for the beef industry. I was the first to take them on.’

‘People are currently signing the NVDs saying that there have been no chemicals on their properties when they really don’t know. There was a close call up at Kingaroy when Cougar Energy contaminated the aquifer and a fellow was quarantined for a month or so until they did tests. There was another case where cattle on a property with a mine got into a chemical dump which only had an electric tape around it. If the resource company hadn’t told him, he would have sent them off to the abattoirs. I have heard of other cases where cattle have drunk waste water, but I can’t confirm these. It’s not a matter of if it will happen, it’s a matter of when it will happen.’

Two weeks after the ring tank burst, Joe held a successful sale day for females from his Bulliac Angus stud. The Department of Primary Industry assured him that he could answer No to question five on the NVD form but Jo is still concerned.

‘If my cattle get contaminated I may get a bit of compensation from a gas company. It won’t be Joe Hill’s meat, or Queensland’s beef but the Australian beef industry that is contaminated and the industry will shut down overnight. What’s the good of compensation if the beef industry is shut down?’