The New Zealand lamb industry had the choice of taking a leadership role and enjoying the benefits of supplying affluent customers or being just another player in the lamb-export scene.
AsureQuality chief executive and former Affco meat company chief executive Tony Egan told farmers at a recent field day at Gore that if the industry wanted to supply the world's affluent and reap the higher prices that offered, it had to meet the standards those markets required and differentiate the product.
Doing things the way they had always been done was not an option, Mr Egan told a Rissington Breedline field day at Barry and Julie Crawford's Waikaka Valley farm.
The Crawfords were the winners of the Alan McRae Memorial award, which recognised them as the country's premier supplier of lamb to the Marks and Spencer (M&S) supermarket contract.
Mr Egan said Rissington Breedline had secured 45% of the M&S chilled-lamb contract, but the value of the contract far exceeded the portion of lamb bought by the supermarket, because it was paying for quality and integrity.
He said M&S had a goal of being the preferred supplier of quality food, a demand New Zealand lamb was ideally positioned to fill.
New Zealand had a 228,000-tonne lamb quota to the European Union, but Mr Egan said pressure would come from countries such as Australia, which had an 18,000-tonne quota, for a greater share.
To preserve New Zealand's privileged position, this country had to differentiate its product, and maintain and verify its quality assurance through monitoring and auditing.
"If we don't, somebody else will. It is future-proofing," Mr Egan said.
The New Zealand meat industry had continually embraced change, starting with the frozen-meat trade, then moving to the chilled trade, further processing carcasses and now to yield-based systems.
On farm, farmers had embraced new technology such as soil tests, environmental plans and farm-assessment tests.
To keep ahead of the pack, New Zealand farmers would have to look at more risk-based assessments such as farm audits, animal welfare inspections, details about where the product had come from and animal identification tracking.
"A whole range of factors will be the norm, just as refrigeration, chilled and high-yielding lamb is the norm."
The industry had a choice.
"You can do that or be pulled back into the pack."