The bone in contention is offal: heart, brains, lungs and liver that Australians look down on, but which is regarded as a delicacy in some countries.

“There’s no doubt we should get paid for offal,” Mr Hedges said. “We get paid for the other bits the meatworks sell. We should get a going rate for the offal too.”

Department of Agriculture figures show Australia exported 18,360 tonnes of sheep and goat offal in 2008, with prices ranging from $1.16/kg for sheep lungs to $5/kg for sheep tongue. Lamb runners (intestine casings for sausages) were exported at an average price of $2.63/kg and nearly $3/kg for tripe.

And there’s more for the not-too-squeamish. Other offerings include frozen sheep spleen, scalded frozen sheep and lamb stomachs, ox bile concentrate, calf trachea, edible beef intestines and even sheep and deer placenta products.

T & R Pastoral is one of the state’s largest meatworks and, along with Coles, Woolworths and the Tatiara Meat Company, buys most of SA’s lambs. They pay farmers according to the dressed weight of the animal: that is, the weight of the animal once it has been gutted, skun and beheaded.

Meatworks also pay – and get paid - for the skins they on-sell.

Not so offal. The meatworks make a killing, but the farmer doesn’t get a cent.

“You tell me how it’s fair?” Mr Hedges said. “It should be written into some sort of law.”

Mr Hedges said that whether due to consistently poor seasons, drought or just the way it is, the farming industry has evolved so that producers just “take what (they) can get”. If they put up too much of a fight asking for a better deal, buyers will simply go elsewhere, leaving the farmer with nothing.

“It’s just not right,” he said.

Michael Schapel, of meat wholesalers P.J. Schapel Pty Ltd, said large meatworks were competitively advantaged against farmers.

“The local farmer doesn’t know where the offal is going,” he said. “Generally speaking it’s too much of a hassle to sell it in large quantities domestically, there’s just not the market. But you can get a bit for it through export