Countries in North America, Asia and Europe want to ship meat to us, prompting concern amongst some industry experts.

Since the outbreak of mad cow disease eight years ago meat imports have been banned. However, now countries which had outbreaks in the past - Canada, the US, Japan and the Netherlands - want to export their fresh beef into Australia.

“It is something they have attempted to do a number of times and they will keep knocking on the door until they succeed,” veteran butcher Brendan Watts said.

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Watts is refusing to stock overseas meats of any kind. “My business relies on traceability, my business relies upon transparency - integrity is all I have,” he said.

For fear of jeopardising Australia's $6 billion beef export market, the Federal Government has now been forced to relax trade bans. “It’s another market for them to enter, it’s another market for them to add on as growth by acquisition,” Watts said.

While long running stringent food standards and safety risk assessments are applied to overseas applications, in the meantime, as it has for fruit and vegetables, the Federal Government is set to introduce new laws requiring retailers to display Country of Origin labels on beef, lamb, pork and chicken.

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At the moment supermarket pork deli meats come from Australia, the US, Canada and Denmark.

“We cannot produce enough pork cheaply for manufacturing. If we were to only use Australian pork I wouldn't be surprised if you might be paying up to $30 a kilo for bacon,” Watts explained.

With a battle looming from overseas, at home the supermarket meat war is hotting up.

Woolworths senior meat manager Andrew Goudie says “we've never ever had results like this before with over half a million kilos in leg of lamb sales - that’s over 300,000 legs of lamb, or the equivalent of an airbus 380.”

Lamb leg sales have surged 600 per cent, and Goudie reveals that from tomorrow there's a raft of new savings to be had at Woolworths. “We're cutting the price on sausages, burgers, beef steaks - its barbeque weather and Woolworths is the place to buy barbeque meat,” he said.

Coles marketing chief Jon Church returns fire, saying “if you're a Woolworths’ customer, come and check out the meat at Coles.”

“We're fighting it out day in day out,” he added.

Coles are permanently slashing meat prices. For instance, lamb forequarter chops have gone from $12 a kilo to $10; pork loin chops are down $5; three star mince is now $6; bulk sausages are $7 for 22 – and sales have surged as a result.

“It’s been a huge success. The sausages that we put on ‘down, down’ are up over 100 per cent, mince up more than 35 per cent,” Church said.

Victorian Farmers Federation President Andrew Broad agrees that cheap meat sells, but asks “at what cost?”

“What we're going to see out of this is the supermarkets will gain market share over the butchers, and that'll put them out of business. Ultimately the Australian consumer will be worse off, because they'll remove choice form the marketplace”.

As for the threat of overseas competition, “mad cow disease absolutely destroyed England, destroyed Ireland and Scotland. I have absolutely no need to travel anywhere else out of Australia for what I sell,” Watts concluded.