Members of The Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy are engaged in locating, extracting, processing, marketing and converting the world's mineral wealth for its consumption in a useful form. We have an ethical responsibility as professionals to carry out our roles in such a way that we seek to optimise the recovery of that wealth for the benefit of the community, not only now, but also in the future._x000D_
To be able to optimise, we must be able to measure with confidence the value of the commodity through the various stages of treatment from discovery of a geological anomaly to the end use._x000D_
This introductory paper will provide an overview of some aspects of the issue, including the possible extension of the coverage of The Institute's Codes to production accounting and reporting.