The fat usesless t-rd (rhymes with herd) should be bloody well horse whipped for once more throwing good money after bad. BEEF producers, through their levies, have unwittingly paid for a highly public face of WWF to represent their interests at a top-level meeting in Canada.
The extreme green organisation's beef sustainability officer was overseas last week on an all-expenses-paid trip to attend the Five Nations Beef Alliance forum, funded by NAB Agribusiness, DAFF and Cattle Council of Australia to the tune of thousands of dollars.
The trip to the trade forum was Ian McConnel's prize for winning CCA's inaugural Rising Champion competition last year, an initiative aimed at seeking out the industry's talented young people. The competition's runner-up Lauchie Cole, from Tasmania, also attended.
McConnel won the award last November while he was still a beef extension officer with the Queensland Government and before his controversial appointment to WWF.
It is understood Mr McConnel represented Cattle Council of Australia among a youth delegation called the Young Ranchers.
Only days before leaving Australia, Mr McConnel defended a WWF document sent to a Queensland parliamentary committee inquiry highly critical of primary producers as land managers and polluters of the Great Barrier Reef.
Cattle Council of Australia executive officer David Inall said he was comfortable with Mr McConnel attending the forum.
"If you sit around and listen to Ian McConnel talk about the Australian beef industry to me he talks like a passionate beef producer," Mr Inall said.
"He's something of an intellectual, he led the debates over there very well, he's always on the front foot and I haven't heard or seen anything from him that shows he's unsupportive of the beef industry.
'And unless someone else tells me otherwise I am very supportive of Ian McConnel."
Source: farmonline.com.au
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