Undisclosed meat cash prompts call for inquiry Agriculture Minister Joe Ludwig is reluctant to force Meat and Livestock Aust to start a contingency fund. A FORMER director of the nation's peak meat-processing research body has backed calls for an inquiry into the meat industry and admits the body had made hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of undisclosed payments to one of his companies. He said book-keeping by the Australian Meat Processor Corporation -- the meat-processing equivalent of Meat and Livestock Australia -- was "loose" and its finances lacked proper scrutiny. Trevor Mickelborough, retired group operations director of Nippon Meat Packers Australia -- the local arm of a major Japanese corporation -- had been an AMPC board member between 2001 and 2007 while still employed by Nippon. Mr Mickelborough yesterday confirmed that Nippon had received more than $800,000 in research and development grants from AMPC between 2003 and 2007, as detailed in internal AMPC documents obtained by The Australian. The grants had been awarded under the AMPC's Plant Initiated Projects scheme in which a quarter of the cost of an approved research project is paid by the company and by AMPC, with the federal government paying the remainder through MLA. In 2005, AMPC said companies associated with eight of its nine directors -- including Mr Mickelborough -- had received research grants but it did not list their value, citing confidentiality agreements. Mr Mickelborough said he had "no idea" why the transactions had not been disclosed. He said the AMPC's PIP scheme was "really introduced because AMPC was accumulating too much funds," and that decisions about which projects should be funded were approved by the board. He said there was no problem with large meat processors receiving substantial grants because they also paid the majority of levies and he was confident the funds Nippon received were spent appropriately. Nevertheless, he said, the grants should have been disclosed. The Australian this week revealed that JBS Australia, whose director John Berry is also a director of AMPC, had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from AMPC for research and development projects. It has also been learned that Teys Bros, a major meat-processing company owned until last month by the Packer family, also received substantial undisclosed payments while one of its employees was a member of AMPC's board. Documents show Teys Bros received about $2 million from AMPC for research and development between 2003 and 2008. AMPC director Tom Maguire, who is separately a senior executive at Teys Bros, confirmed the payments to Teys and said Teys had undertaken research projects more recently via the AMPC program. Mr Maguire said there were no concerns regarding conflict of interest because board members did not approve individual research projects. While payments to companies associated with AMPC's directors were not reported in AMPC's annual reports, reports detailing such research projects were provided to industry. AMPC chairman Gary Hardwick declined to comment.