President's report

Growing numbers: celebrating our members' contributions to FY2024 success!

Dear Members,

Since the last time I reported to you, your Board and Executive have been busy implementing the programs and strategies that have been agreed upon in past and previous cycles. It’s been a bit like a duck swimming - while all looks calm on the surface there is plenty going on underneath!

While the 2025-2030 Strategic plan was released, in November, the Executive has put a huge effort into developing a 2025-2030 Business Plan. This will continue to develop and deliver outcomes that will benefit all members. The Board is very aware that the monies (and labour) that are being budgeted for belong to the Membership. The outcomes of this plan will benefit not only all members but will continue to keep the Australian Wagyu Association at the forefront of breed development and R&D worldwide.

While the development of our business relationship with AbacusBio in creating the new BFI (Breeder Feeder Index) and upgrading of the F1T and FBT indexes, is significant in itself, it has been gratifying to see DNA sampling, registrations and data collection just keep pouring in. Registrations for FY2024 were up 54% on the previous financial year, with a huge 43,000 registrations recorded. With an approximate 33,000 active females registered in the AWA for the year, the extra numbers have been made up by breeders seeing the value we offer in registering and genotyping their Purebred and Content herds.

The first half of this financial year has seen nearly 6,000 carcase records submitted, compared with 3,000 over the same period in the previous financial year. This takes the total number of Fullblood carcase records to around 50,000. EBVs are trending very favourably. One astonishing number is that the EBV for marbling has gone from 1.4 in 2023 born calves to 1.8 in 2024 born calves. This is important as it shows the application of EBVs to improving commercial production across the whole herd, not just in select seedstock animals.

Congratulations to all members contributing to the success and progress of these numbers by submitting their data. As most of these contributors have worked out, this data is collected in normal management practices anyway, so it’s only a very simple process to submit for analysis, benefiting all members and progressing the whole industry.

A critical issue facing the Wagyu breed today is, in my opinion, horns. We all know what the disadvantages of these are. The good news is that there are a couple of solutions to this problem. We can either remove them by genetic technologies that have approved applications in other countries (eg. gene editing), or we can use polled Purebred cattle. Rather than go into the pros and cons of the different methods in this report, I would encourage members to engage in a conversation with other breeders, and bring forward ideas and thoughts to the Board. We have one of the key international authorities on gene editing, Dr Alison Van Eenennaam, at the WagyuEdge'25 in Perth. Alison will be able to enlighten us further on this subject and the application of gene editing in beef cattle breeding worldwide. I encourage all members to come and participate in this conversation and take the chance to speak directly with Alison.

Looking forward to seeing many of you at the conference in Perth, where I’m sure the excellent line up of domestic and international speakers will not only educate but entertain us.

Laird Morgan

AWA President