Stock agents are furious their role sourcing and managing the flow of livestock from farms to markets is being questioned in a red meat industry strategy.
Their representative body, the New Zealand Stock and Station Agents Association refuses to discuss the matter publicly.
Several agents have approached the Otago Daily Times angry that the new strategy being written by Deloitte accuses them of compromising rather than adding value to the red meat sector by blurring market information to farmers.
Association chairman Terry Cairns refused to comment when approached yesterday.
PGG Wrightson sales manager Grant Bunting said he was reluctant to comment as he had only heard the views of the strategy's authors through the media.
"I would say they have not spent a lot of time within the stock and station industry in preparing their report," he said.
He planned to attend a roadshow to hear the presentation and to speak with the consultants preparing the report.
Agents who contacted this newspaper but were unable to comment on the issue publicly, said the report's authors did not understand their role.
This was a view supported by Maniototo farmer Philip Smith who was also angered by the accusations, saying that in drought-prone areas such as his, agents played a crucial role selling stock when conditions were dry and keeping meat companies honest when farmers were weak sellers.
Last summer, when dry conditions required him to sell stock, meat companies bought his prime lambs for $65 each and a stock firm arranged the sale of his store lambs for $66.
Earlier this year he said old ewes were selling in saleyards for $20 to $30 a head higher than meat companies were paying on farm, forcing them to lift the schedule.
"They keep meat companies honest and you take that out and basically meat companies set the price - and what is there to say we aren't well behind the eight ball?"
Mr Smith said stock agents used contacts and knowledge to assist farmers.
When a North Otago meat company was forced to close, stock firms paid out farmers who had sent stock but had not been paid.
Alasdair MacLeod, a Deloitte partner and an author of the red meat strategy being compiled for Beef and Lamb New Zealand and the Meat Industry Association, said one of the first targets to improve the sector's financial performance was to streamline the prime stock procurement process.
That meant replacing stock agents and stock traders with supply contracts and relationships between farmers and meat companies, so farmers had better access to market information and were rewarded for supplying stock on time and to specifications.
He said earlier this week that if farmers were aware of and happy to pay a fee to stock firms and saw value in them sorting and arranging the sale of their livestock, then that was their decision and their business.
But he still questioned whether stock agents added value to the process.
