Australian beef's foothold in the lucrative Japanese market is rarely spoken about without reference to the devastation of the discovery of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy in the form of mad cow disease, in Canada and the United States.
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While the benefit those disease outbreaks in the 2000s would deliver to Australia were recognised from the minute they were revealed, they were never celebrated.
"We may be an island but the recognition has always been that Australia is only one bad decision by one person away from the same disaster," said respected red meat industry identity Don Mackay.
"It was the same, and still is, with the foot and mouth and lumpy skin disease threats.
"And always in the background is the concern that diseases, even if they don't affect humans as is the case with FMD and LSD, have the potential to turn people away from beef.
"Australia's reputation for clean, green beef is the cornerstone of our business. It's something we can never take for granted."
Mr Mackay, who was managing director of AACo during the decade that the BSE scare in Canada and the US had severe implications for global beef trade flows, said the headlines about what the associated disease could do to people who ate affected beef were very frightening.
How it unfolded
The discoveries came in Canada in May 2003 and then in the US in December. Japan quickly banned all beef imports from the US and Canada.
As a result, Australian beef exports to Japan lifted from 279,000 tonnes shipping weight in 2003 to 405,000t in 2005, according to Department of Agriculture records.
In December 2005, the US ban was lifted on cattle younger than 21 months of age. It wasn't lifted to 31 months until 2013.
While the US did get back into the Japanese market, it was on a restricted basis, and Australian beef had ruled supreme in what was a very high-end and valuable market in the years between.
No question about Japan's reaction
Human deaths linked to BSE in the United Kingdom in the mid 1990s had already laid the foundation for societal fears about the disease.
Mr Mackay was a regular visitor to Japanese beef importers at the time as AACo was sending both its own branded products and supplying JBS, Teys, Nippon and other companies exporting to Japan.
He said there was no question Japan would react swiftly to the Canadian case.
"The trade between Canada and the US was unfettered at the time," he said.
"And Japanese consumers were very heavily focused on food quality and safety.
"But we knew while it was a sugar hit for us, the broader risk was more significant. And, like FMD in recent years, you don't wish things like this on your competitor, ever.
"There is always the understanding that the same thing could haunt us the very next day."
Buffer
The increased share of the premium Japanese market is said to have buffered Australian cattle producers from the effects of three significant droughts during the 2000s - two of which were called one-in-a-hundred year events.
According to Meat & Livestock Australia records, even when Japan lifted the ban, the US was still hamstrung and the price fall for Australia, which was in the midst of drought at the time, could have been much more severe.
"A similar scenario occurred in 2013, when, in the midst of an Australian drought, the Japanese ban on US imports was lifted on cattle below 31 months of age," MLA documents say.
"However, again, the impact of the change in policy on real prices was not severe due to the strong import demand in the US, China, South East Asia and the Middle East, among others. Additionally, strong live export demand also alleviated supply pressure."
Mr Mackay said what the 2000s droughts taught people was the danger of waiting too long.
"Ironically, last year we saw the opposite where people went too quick and sold as soon as there was indication of a drought coming but it didn't eventuate.
"Getting the balance right is very hard. But our industry has moved now towards factoring drought into management and financial plans, and that's a good thing."
1990s expansion set the scene
The 1990s were a decade of building numbers for the beef industry.
After bottoming out in 1986 following the great beef crash of the 1970s and then drought, the Australian cattle herd gradually rebuilt through this decade, according to MLA.
"The cattle industry was supported by a depreciating Australian dollar, average seasonal conditions through much of the decade, Korean and Japanese trade liberalisation and solid productivity gains," MLA reported.
Beef farm total factor productivity, as measured by the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences, trended up from the late 1980s to the 2000s.
Government economists attributed this to the eradication of brucellosis and tuberculosis in the northern herd; improved reproductive performance, genetic selection and mortality rates; the expansion of the feedlot sector and live export trade and a transition to Bos Indicus breeds in the northern herd.
Seasonal conditions for much of the 1990s were average but that meant many producers could at the least maintain their numbers. Many expanded.
The Australian dollar also depreciated against the it's two major beef customers, Japan and the US, throughout the 1990s.
All this set the scene for an industry ready to pounce on the opportunity presented by the gap left by the States in Japan.