End of Financial Year Wrap-Up – National Sheep Health Monitoring Project

As part of MINTRAC’s continued partnership with Animal Health Australia, we’ve successfully wrapped up another productive year supporting the National Sheep Health Monitoring (NSHM) Project.

Over the 2024–25 financial year, our team has completed site visits to eight participating abattoirs across Australia, where we’ve worked closely with on-site inspection teams to carry out two key activities:

Meat Inspector Verifications (MIVs) – Ensuring consistent, accurate identification and reporting of key sheep health conditions during post-mortem inspection. This verification process supports the integrity of the data provided back to producers, helping them improve flock health and on-farm practices.

Refresher Training for 73 Meat Inspectors – Across our visits, 73 inspectors participated in targeted refresher training aligned with the NSHM condition list. Each inspector completed 1–3 short courses, with in-person delivery proving especially valuable for those with lower computer literacy or limited access to digital learning tools.

The combination of hands-on training and verification has helped reinforce best practices across participating sites, contributing to more consistent and reliable feedback to producers and industry bodies.

In the year ahead, MINTRAC will continue to work with Animal Health Australia to enhance the NSHM project’s value to the supply chain. A key development in the 2025–26 financial year will be the pilot implementation of a voice recognition system at selected sites.

This technology will allow meat inspectors to record disease and defect data hands-free in real time, improving both the accuracy and efficiency of data collection. More detailed and timely data will assist producers, animal health advisors, processors and other supply chain stakeholders in identifying emerging health and welfare issues and improving sustainability practices.

By improving how this information is captured, MINTRAC aims to support better animal welfare outcomes, improved feedback loops to producers, and stronger industry data integrity overall.

We would like to sincerely thank all abattoir teams, meat inspectors, and project stakeholders who have supported this work throughout the year. We look forward to another year of progress, innovation, and collaboration to strengthen the red meat industry’s focus on animal health, welfare and sustainability.

For more information about the NSHM project or the voice recognition rollout, please contact the MINTRAC team or visit the MINTRAC project page.