Compliance

Animal Welfare

RLX believes that animal welfare is a key responsibility of any livestock facility operator and is pivotal in the commercial viability of these operations. RLX believe good animal welfare practices are:

• Ethically correct;
• Necessary from an industry image and marketing perspective; and
• Important to ensure the safety and quality of the food products produced by livestock being transacted through facilities it operates and manages.

RLX’s policy is to be compliant with all industry standards. Specifically, we look to comply with the Australian Code of Practice for ‘The Selling of Livestock’ and ‘The Australian Model Code of Practice for the Welfare of Animals – Animals at Saleyards’.

Sustainability and Biosecurity

Sustainability and bio-security management plans are developed and implemented from Animal Health Australia Bio-Security Guidelines, issued for saleyards (2003).

The existing emergency disease response plan will continue to be developed in consultation with local and state emergency disease response plans and will include five basic phases – investigation, alerts, operation, stand down and recovery based from the AUSVETPLAN Enterprise Manual, Saleyards and Transport.

Issues taken into consideration as part of a facility’s Biosecurity management system to reduce the risk of emergency disease incident include:

• General issues – including, but not limited to construction, water supply, cleaning, maintenance and effluent disposal
• Stockfeed – sourcing material from manufacturers that operate under a quality assurance program
• Pest and transport control
• Internal quarantine – slaughter only sections including disposal of dead stock to isolate sick animals or groups containing sick livestock
• Veterinary/animal health services and training of staff

• Record keeping – for the movement of animals, feed ingredients and equipment
• Cleaning and disinfecting of yards, trucks, equipment, people and site area
• Water supply and waste water management in the event decontamination of vehicles and equipment is necessary

Environment

All necessary licences and approvals required to operate the RLX facilities are in effect. Required site monitoring and reporting is administered to comply with the relevant licences and authorities.