Photo: FW Archhive
Speaking to Farmer’s Weekly, Red Meat Industry Services (RMIS) Chief Operations Officer Phillip Oosthuizen detailed the extensive industry-wide consultation process behind the selection of the nine projects.
“The Field to Future process started with eight focus group sessions to table needs, challenges, and opportunities and generate potential research topics,” he said.
He explained that these sessions included academics, researchers, farmers, feedlots, and processors.
The focus groups covered eight broad themes: animal health and biosecurity; meat safety and consumer needs; environmental and social sustainability; competitiveness in production, genetics, and nutrition; market access and development; small-scale farmer development; innovation and technology; and value chain risk, resilience, and change management.
Oosthuizen added that, following these discussions, each focus group facilitator presented a proposed research topic aligned with one of the eight themes at a prioritisation meeting attended by all facilitators, four industry representatives, and RMIS.
After debating and ranking, RMIS issued a call for proposals and received 54 submissions. The organisation then evaluated them and contracted experts before the final nine were approved and contracted.
Oosthuizen said that although each research project has specific outputs, RMIS views the 2025 portfolio as a strategic building block for long-term industry transformation.
“The expected outcomes of all the research build the foundation for future priority projects, ultimately contributing to the objectives in the [Red Meat Industry Strategy 2030],” he said.
These objectives include improving disease preparedness, strengthening market access through compliance and traceability, supporting progress in genetics, and promoting an inclusive value chain where commercial and smallholder farmers can compete effectively.
According to a press release, the Field to Future guides RMIS’s entire project portfolio and ensures that all interventions remain relevant, scientifically supported, and aligned with industry strategy.
Speaking in a press release, RMIS CEO Dewald Olivier said: “Our research strategy is built on listening. Every project is based on a practical challenge identified by the people who live and work within the red meat sector. This ensures our projects are relevant and positioned to deliver measurable results for the industry we serve.”
Of the nine approved projects, the foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) research led by Prof Armanda Bastos from the Department of Veterinary Tropical Diseases at the University of Pretoria is expected to have the most immediate regulatory impact.
According to the press release, the study investigates the persistence of the SAT-type FMD virus in cattle and aims to quantify the actual risk posed by carriers at slaughter.
Current regulations require strict deboning, deglanding, and offal disposal measures that are costly for abattoirs and feedlots. These measures are applied uniformly, despite ongoing industry concerns that they may no longer reflect actual transmission risks.
Bastos’s research will determine whether deboning is necessary at 15 days post-infection; identify potential virus persistence sites such as glands, heads, and offal; and develop a serological test that can distinguish carrier animals from those that have fully recovered.
Oosthuizen said the approval of the nine projects reflects a unified commitment to evidence-based industry development.
“It shows a strong foundation for building towards the 2030 objectives as a collective,” he says.
The breakthroughs are anticipated in areas such as beef grading, FMD policy reform, and a national vaccination strategy aimed at improving preparedness for major animal diseases.
Questions about how smallholder farmers benefit from research are increasingly central in national agriculture debates, and Oosthuizen explained that RMIS designs research with the entire value chain in mind.
“All research is aimed at enhancing different nodes and aspects of the value chain, which will benefit all role players, including emerging farmers,” he said.
