Two crossbench MPs want to make it illegal to market Australian-grown meat as 'Australian' if it is processed overseas.

NXT MP Rebekha Sharkie and Member for Kennedy Bob Katter say the reform is needed to protect Australia's reputation as a producer of safe, high-quality beef.

"We need to safeguard that investment [in local production and welfare standards] by ensuring other enterprises don't ruin Australia's reputation by selling meat that is substandard or processed in an environment which we, as Australians, cannot determine," Ms Sharkie told Federal Parliament on Monday.

"You only have to look at the food contamination scandals that we've seen in the United Kingdom with mad cow disease ... [to see] how easily an industry can take a blow to its reputation."

Patrick Hutchinson from the Australian Meat Industry Council (AMIC) backed Ms Sharkie's claim that her bill would help protect 35,000 direct local meat processing jobs.

"Through the Australian standard, we have the highest level of food safety programs in the world. We also have the highest level of worker safety and animal welfare," he said.

"That combination is what underpins our Australian brand overseas and that's what underpins our jobs here, and our product."

Live exporters critical

Some in the live export industry have questioned how such a law could be enforced in the wet markets of Indonesia and Vietnam where the majority of Australia's live-exported, overseas-processed cattle are sold.

The Australian Livestock Exporters' Council chief executive Simon Westaway called the proposal "unworkable".

"Livestock producers are rightly very proud to have the meat derived from their stock marketed as 'Australian' in our overseas markets, regardless of whether it is exported as a boxed product, a whole carcase, or shipped live," Mr Westaway said in a statement.

Troy Setter, the chief executive of Australia's second largest cattle producer Consolidated Pastoral Company (CPC), said he needed to see more detail of the proposal.

But he was concerned that it could set up one marketing rule for the beef industry and another for the rest of Australia's exported agricultural products such as cotton, wool and seafood.

"When I travel overseas I often see fresh fish and live fish from Australia, or woollen and cotton products or grain products that are actively marketed as Australian products," he said.

"They're grown in Australia and then further processed, value-added or packaged offshore.

"I think you'd need to have a look at the broader agricultural production system that this proposed legislation may impact."

He said refusing to allow live-exported Australian cattle to be branded that way could also reduce transparency for international consumers of Australian meat.

"We openly and transparently explain to them that it is Australian cattle that were born, bred and grown in Australia and then finished in the market in Indonesia, and that meat is sold as an 'Australian produced, Indonesian processed' product.

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"I think it's important for anyone in the food business to have full transparency with their customers."

Asked how the law could be enforced in overseas markets if it passed the parliament, Ms Sharkie acknowledged Australia "can't control what happens in the rest of the world".

"But I do think that we have some ability to control what Australian individuals say and do with our Australian cattle," she said.