Working Group
Allan Piggott
SA Sheep Industry Blueprint Chairman
Allan is a third generation primary producer from Moorlands in the Murray Mallee. He and his family farm 2300 hectares producing grain, prime lambs and rams for the prime lamb industry. He has been involved in the South Australian red meat industry for 35 years and has built an extensive network of contacts. He is chairman of the SA Sheep Industry Blueprint, an initiative of Livestock SA and the SA Sheep Advisory Group. He is also president of Sheep Producers Australia. Allan chaired the successful LambEx 2014 conference organising committee, which was held in Adelaide, and is currently a member of the SA Sheep Advisory Group and Royal Adelaide Show Executive Councillor.
Contact Allan on 0407 580 925 and email
Bruce Creek
SA Beef Industry Blueprint Chairman
Bruce Creek has a strong history in the South Australian beef cattle sector, he currently manages several properties on Kangaroo Island and the Fleurieu Peninsula, overseeing a 3000-cow commercial herd and 16,000 ewe flock. He formerly worked for The Basin Angus Stud, selling 300 bulls a year; managed a commercial beef cattle herd at Avenue Range for the Bainger family’s Hillcrest Pastoral Company and spent 4.5 years in Kazakhstan establishing an Angus herd of about 4000 cows. Under his leadership the Far Eastern European business grew to become one of the world’s largest registered Angus herds.
Contact Bruce on 0487 587 140 and email
Dr Stephen Lee
Blueprint Manager
Stephen has extensive experience in applied research, technical extension and private sector work in product development and commercialisation. His research scope includes sheep and beef genetics and genomics, improving livestock productivity, reducing greenhouse gas emissions from livestock production, and increasing carcass compliance and eating quality. In 2014 he led the development of the National Beef Genetics Extension Strategy for Meat and Livestock Australia. Stephen has also developed technical extension packages on outcomes from the Beef Cooperative Research Centre (CRC) on DNA technology and for the Sheep CRC. He believes the Blueprint will provide significant benefit to sheep producers and throughout the SA sheep industry.
Contact Stephen on 0421 570 630 and email
Andrew Bell
Working Group Member
Andrew’s forebears started farming at Millicent in the Lower South East in 1928. The family farm now covers around 4500 hectares and centres its activities around growing crops and grazing Hereford cattle. Andrew has developed extensive contacts in the livestock industry from production through to marketing, processing and research and the family are currently involved with the Beef Information Nucleus project through Herefords Australia. Andrew wants to see sustainable profitability in farming so the next generation can be encouraged to remain in primary production.
Michael Blake
Working Group Member
Michael is the meat and livestock account manager for Primary Industries and Regions SA. He joined the State Government after 10 years at Elders and 20 years in global wool buying, processing and trading for Chargeurs. He was part of the committee which developed the 2005 Sheep Industry Scorecard and was a committee member for the 2014 LambEx conference held in Adelaide. He broad sheep industry experience, based on studies in animal science, and is the fifth generation involved in sheep farming, growing up on his family station.
Dr Troy Fischer
Working Group Member
Troy is a fourth generation producer from Wasleys in the Mid North. He runs a grain and sheep enterprise with his family, including a ram breeding operation for prime lambs. Troy has a PhD in sheep genetics with Meat and Livestock Australia. Before returning to the family farm, he worked in the red meat, wool and wine industries in a range of research, management and commercial roles. Troy has been passionate about sheep since a very young age and is extremely positive about the opportunities that lie ahead.
Richard Harvie
Working Group Member
Richard is a livestock agent and partner at PPHS. He has been an agent for 30 years, mostly in the Naracoorte region. Richard’s involvement within the industry has included being a member of the Naracoorte Combined Agents with a term as chairman, as well as assisting the local council with upgrades to the regional selling centre. He has also been invited by industry groups to help shape the direction of ovine johnes disease cross-border trading and management. Richard is currently working to revive the South Australian Stock Agents Association to lift the agency industry’s profile in SA. Richard and his family run a property breeding prime lambs and backgrounding cattle.
Elke Hocking
Working Group Member
Elke is a member of the SA Livestock Consultant’s (SALC), a group of independent 
consultants who provide services to the livestock industry across South Australia and interstate to build the capacity of the broad-acre livestock industry. After being a committee member for LambEx 2014, Elke developed her own consultancy service and delivers producer group training and is editor for the Grasslands Society of Southern Australia Newsletter. Elke has farming interests on Fleurieu Peninsula, Kangaroo Island and Lucindale and has skills and knowledge in Meat Science, sheep and beef research, facilitation, adoption and communication. She has an Honours and Masters Degree in Agricultural Science from the University of Adelaide, where she majored in Animal Science. Elke has worked as a meat research officer with the Beef CRC, NSW, and between 2000 and 2007, she worked for Rural Solutions SA: PIRSA and the SA Lamb Development Team as a Sheep Product Development Officer for Lamb. Elke is inspired by the Blueprint Value Chain approach and is looking forward to assisting with the delivery phase.
Mark Inglis
Working Group Member
Mark is farm assurance and supply chain manager with JBS, based near Geelong but covering the company’s operations throughout Australia. His role involves lamb and beef farm assurance program management, oversight of part of the company’s Meat Standards Australia commitment, component of producer education and coordinating the company lamb and beef research and development. His background is in commercial animal husbandry and animal production operations, working on and managing livestock properties in Western Australia’s Kimberley, sheep properties – both wool and meat – in Victoria and establishing a 900-sow outdoor, free-range pig breeding operation. Before joining JBS, he spent six years with Meat & Livestock Australia.
Jane Kellock
Working Group Member
Jane and her husband Greg and their family farm at Farrell Flat in South Australia’s Mid North. She grew up on a sheep station at Carrieton in the Flinders Rangers and has spent her life being involved with agriculture. The Kellocks have a diverse business which balances several enterprises and differing land systems. Jane is a member of the SA Sheep Advisory Group and was a committee member of LambEx 2014. She believes the SA sheep industry has the potential to grow and is looking forward to being part of a dynamic group of industry stakeholders who have a passion to see that happen through the blueprint.
Joe Keynes
Working Group Member
Joe is a partner in Keyneton Station, a family farming business, operating at Keyneton and inthe South East, principally grazing Merino sheep, Angus cattle and first-cross lambs. Joe has had a long involvement in regional and state organisations including the Natural Resources Management Council and the SA Murray-Darling Basin NRM Board. He has also been a member of LambEx 2014 Committee and the Cattle Council of Australia Research, Development, Extension and Sustainability Sub-Committee. He believes a strong Livestock SA is needed to advocate to government and industry for future policy development and investment in programs that support agriculture. Joe is currently the South Australian representative on WoolProoducers Australia. He is also Chair of the PPSA Natural Resources Committee.
Jane Lutt
Working Group Member
Jane is administration manager at EMS Rural Exports. Jane was raised on her family’s mixed farm, where her brother, nephew and son continue to farm as the fourth and fifth generation. After marrying the son of a local farming family, they farmed on the Eyre Peninsula and central New South Wales. Jane has gained a diverse range of skills and experience from employment in medical and financial planning practices. Jane is chairperson of the South East Australian Livestock Exporters Association and a member of the SA National Livestock Identification Scheme Sheep and Goats Implementation Committee and is involved in has numerous school, sporting and community organisations.
David Michell
Working Group Member
David is chairman and executive director of Michell Wool, a fifth generation, South Australian family wool processing company. His experience includes banking and financial risk management, futures and currency trading, wool processing, exporting and international business operations management. Michell Wool is active from farmgate to retail shelf, owning factories in South Australia and China, processing nearly 15 million kilograms of Australian wool per year. David oversees the wool business, Wirra Wirra Wines (as chairman) and ioMerino, a performance wool garment business (as owner). His businesses rely on the success of the agricultural sector and is the reason he is involved with development of the SA Sheep Industry Blueprint.
Dr Wayne Pitchford
Working Group Member
Wayne is Professor of Animal Breeding and Genetics at the University of Adelaide. He studied agricultural science at the university, completed his PhD in Sydney and has been lecturing at Waite and Roseworthy since 1992. He has been a program leader in the Beef CRC, director of Pork CRC and continues to lead multiple sheep and cattle projects. The majority of his research has been targeted at genetic improvement of production efficiency and meat quality. His passion in agriculture is to grow people rather than crops or livestock and he supervises student projects in physiology, statistical genetics, social science, extension methodologies and influence of social media on public opinion.
Steve Radeski
Working Group Member
Steve is state agribusiness manager with ANZ, covering South Australia, Northern Territory, Western Australia and the western districts of NSW, and runs a small steer trading operation in the Adelaide Hills. He is a board member of Livestock SA. He has extensive experience in the livestock industry, working in the pastoral zone on a number of stations around Alice Springs and as a contract musterer in the Tennant Creek district. He was also head stockman on Kirkimbie station in the East Kimberleys with Vestey’s and ran a grain/breeder operation on the Darling Downs for 10 years. He has a Bachelor of Agricultural Economics from the University of New England.
Dr David Rutley
Working Group Member
David is the lamb supply chain coordinator for Thomas Foods International. He has been a researcher, consultant and lecturer with the University of Adelaide since the mid-1990s. David is interested in all aspects of the red meat supply chain, having both worked for industry and conducted research in all areas from consumer perception to retail and food service, distribution, processing, finishing, production, breeding and genetics. David is particularly interested in the value of consistency and using individual animal information to pass consumer feedback through the value chain to the finishers, producers, breeders and geneticists.
Paul Sandercock
Working Group Member
Paul Sandercock is the Executive Director of the Australian Meat Industry Council (AMIC) in South Australia. AMIC is the largest employer association representing the post-farmgate meat industry in Australia. Paul has been with AMIC since 1995 and, prior to that, was involved in business management through his own consultancy. Paul is an experienced business manager and qualified chef, having operated his own restaurants in South Australia for more than 20 years.
John Williams
JS Davies Research Chair
Professor John Williams obtained his Bachelor of Science degree from the University of London with honours in physics and biology, and his PhD in Biochemistry from the National Institute for Medical Research, London. He moved to Edinburgh in Scotland to start his work on genetics, first with the University of Edinburgh on drosophila before moving into the field of agriculture at the Roslin Institute, where he was Head of the Bovine Genomics Section, and Coordinator of the Institute Complex Traits Program. He moved to the Parco Tecnologico Padano in Italy in 2005 where he was the Science Director overseeing research on livestock and crop species.
Dr Mary Carr
Working Group Member
Dr Mary Carr has worked as a veterinarian for PIRSA since 2008 and is currently the Manager of Risk Management and Response. Her experience includes animal health disease surveillance systems; emergency response preparedness; on-farm biosecurity practices and livestock identification and traceability. Mary has worked with both the extensive (sheep cattle and goats) and intensive (poultry, pigs and dairy) production systems.
Gillian Fennell
Working Group Member
Gillian Fennell was born and bred in North West Queensland, before moving to SA almost 15 years ago with her husband and his family when they sold their Qld holdings and purchased Lambina Station – a million acre rangelands cattle station in the Far North of SA, where they run a herd of Charbray breeders. Gillian is President of the Remote & Isolated Children’s Exercise and is also currently the SA Representative for Australian Women in Agriculture, a non-profit incorporated organisation established in 1994. It is Australia’s peak organisation for women across all areas of agriculture. She is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Emily Buddle
Working Group Member
Starting out her agricultural path at Urrbrae Agricultural High School, Emily completed her Bachelor of Agricultural Science at the University of Adelaide in 2013. Throughout her undergraduate career, she was supported by the AgriFutures (formally RIRDC) Horizon Scholarship, sponsored by Meat and Livestock Australia. In 2014, Emily completed her honours project titled “Social Media, Animal Welfare Activism and the Australian Livestock Industry” at the University of Adelaide. She received first class honours and is now completing her PhD, looking at consumer perceptions of sheep and beef cattle welfare in Australia. She also has an interest in the role media plays in communication about agriculture and animal production, particularly the dialogue which occurs between industry, activists and the broader public.
Charlie Crozier
Working Group Member
Charlie, currently works in a part time capacity as Chief Executive Officer of the Mackillop Farm Management Group. He also runs a property at Keith in the South East. Charlie’s past and present roles within the industry include being a member of the Limestone Coast Red Meat Cluster, Executive Officer for Lucerne Australia and project development work for the Murraylands Regional Development Board. He has a Degree in Management from the University of Sydney, which he has used extensively throughout his agricultural career to further develop his skills and knowledge. He believes the SA Sheep and Beef Industry Blueprints will provide significant benefits to producers and the whole value chain of the SA red meat industry.
Paul Vogt
Working Group Member
Paul Vogt is Managing Director of Iranda Beef in Tintinara. Paul has a family history in the South Australian meat and livestock industry that reaches back over four generations. He began as a trainee livestock buyer with Metro Meat Ltd in 1987 working his way into trading roles and finally starting his own commodities trading business in 1998. At this time he also became involved in the family farming and feedlot operations at Tintinara. Paul was instrumental in the planning, design and construction of the newly created feedlot at Iranda. Paul joined ALFA as a Councillor in 2011.
Kitty Sheridan
Working Group Member
Kitty has worked in Strategic Operations for Teys Australia’s Naracoorte plant since November 2014. She grew up on a mixed cattle and cropping property outside Dubbo, NSW, before completing her studies at Charles Sturt University. She worked for two years as a Leading Hand at Teys Charlton Feedlot before starting her current position. Kitty was the South Australian Rising Beef Champion for 2015 and continues to serve on the Cattle Council of Australia sub-committee Industry Systems and Food Safety. She is also a member of the Red Meat Cluster.
