The perception was MLA, the organisation largely financed by Australia's cattle and sheep farmers, had been asleep at the wheel. Or worse. MLA has attempted to deal with the issue of restraining live cattle for ritual slaughter in Indonesia through progressive iterations of ''cattle restraining boxes'' since 2000. But the mark 1 box developed by MLA, with about 100 installed across Indonesia, has hardly been a raging success. In fact the mark 1 boxes - in which cattle are tripped onto their side on a sloping concrete block - are being blamed by the RSPCA for perpetuating the cruelty problems highlighted in the Four Corners report. These problems include multiple slashes at the throat during slaughter, cattle heads striking the ground forcefully when they are tripped over and painful handling procedures. The development of workable slaughterhouse boxes still has a way to go. A report on mark 4, which squashes the cattle from the sides then slowly tips them onto their side, was only released in July last year.

All this work on suitable restraints makes protestations by MLA's senior personnel about their ignorance of conditions in Indonesia seem, at best, forced. ''Number one, can I say really clearly: if MLA knew that this horrible activity was taking place within the marketplace, would we not have done something about it?'' the MLA's chairman, Don Heatley, said on ABC Radio's Victorian Country Hour on Thursday. ''The short answer is: yes, we would. We are all thinking cattlemen and producers, and we just don't tolerate it here, why tolerate it there?'' But if MLA wants to stand on its record, what is its record like? Mr Economou argues there has been a seismic shift in the industry structure, but MLA has not changed to reflect that shift.

''Once the Aussie battler farmers and the Aussie battler processors were taking on the world of export meat,'' he says. ''But the domestic and international meat industry landscape has significantly changed.'' Mr Economou and the organisation he is a director of, the Australian Beef Association, are incensed about a perceived drift away from the concerns of beef producers. They see MLA's duty to its members being distorted by the two foreign-owned meat processors - JBS-Swift and Cargill Teys - and the two powerful domestic meat retailers - Coles and Woolworths. Big sums are at stake. Last year, MLA, which is owned by its 47,000 members, counted $96 million in revenues from cattle and sheep farmers, lotfeeders and other parts of the meat production industry. It also received $44.5 million in government funding. Exhibit one in Mr Economou's argument is the presence of JBS-Swift's chief executive, Iain Mars, on the board of MLA. JBS-Swift, headquartered in Brazil, just happens to be the processor of 30 per cent of Australia's export cattle.

Exhibit two is an enduring opaqueness about how MLA spends its research and development dollars. This is not a small argument, given it spent $82 million raised from farmers on research and development last financial year, and about $700 million since 1998. And exhibit three is the shadowy process by which companies, including at least one of the meat processors (JBS-Swift again), appear to double their research and development dollars through a poorly disclosed funding mechanism. Through renewed focus on a couple of incendiary submissions bowled up last year to a Productivity Commission inquiry into research and development corporations, the beef association has put the issue of MLA accountability on the agenda. Mr Economou's diligence shines through in the beef association submissions he wrote that disclose only 260 research and development projects that were funded by MLA had a final report. MLA strongly defends its disclosure, saying not all projects receive a final report, and questions Economou's count of 4000 research and development projects. But the point still stands: the final results of a large amount of MLA research and development projects are unknown. And, as far as the public can tell, unaccounted for.

Mr Economou has also exposed the lack of publicly available documentation about the individual dollar amounts handed over for these research projects. While annual audits and compliance audits are used to tell the federal government everything is in order with MLA's research and development funding, no one knows publicly which body received what MLA funding. The most undisclosed area of research funding is, paradoxically, the funding that is boosted by dollar-for-dollar funding from state and federal governments. Through a wholly owned subsidiary known as the MLA Donor Company, MLA received $11 million in ''donations'' from extremely beneficent companies last financial year. This was souped up with dollar-for-dollar government funding to become 63 research and development contracts valued at $22.9 million.

The annual report states that the funding contributes to projects across ''all parts of the industry supply chain including processors, value-adders, breed societies, large pastoral companies and technology providers''. But the projects funded through the MLA Donor Company are not the subject of any disclosure. Or, as the MLA said in its own riposte to the beef association's complaints about a lack of transparency: ''None of the MLA Donor Company [project] reports are included in the [research] database.'' Of the 63 contracts, two projects in the annual report include ''commercial validation of four robotic processor automation technologies'' and ''supported the development of an Australian Scott Automation and processor joint venture''. Beyond that there is a veil, because the projects in the donor company-funded ''research and development partnerships'' are regarded as commercial secrets. Mr Economou says that this goes against the grain of what research and development should be about.

''You must publish research and development so it can be built on by researchers and used by industry,'' he says. ''That's the scientific requirement as opposed to an accounting requirement.'' Last year's annual report does, however, give a steer (no pun intended) about how some of the cash received through the donor company was distributed. Under the related party declarations, Mr Mars discloses Swift Australia received $2.4 million in funding, primarily for research and development. It also discloses Swift paid $844,000 in the same period, primarily through the MLA Donor Company. So, in rough terms, Australia's largest meat processor puts $1 in and gets $3 out. For what? That isn't disclosed on the research database. These kinds of transactions get Mr Economou's goat, so to speak, when considering the needs of Australian farmers.

''The collective body has become captured by the giant local and international merchants,'' he says. ''It's not working in our interests.'' Mr Economou and the 700 members of the beef association are working against a headwind. The Victorian Farmers Federation livestock group meeting in Ballarat on Thursday voted to unanimously support MLA. ''The real issue is the reopening of this trade into Indonesia … the reality of the situation is we are dealing with a suspension MLA did not create,'' Mr Heatley told ABC Radio. That is, to a degree, probably true. But that doesn't appear to stop Mr Economou and his quest for accountability, dollar by dollar, about where MLA is spending its money.