Food for Thought

Posting by Poultry World editor Richard Allison

Next week sees me head south to Brazil. No it's not my annual summer break, (although I wish it was), it's work.

I'm travelling with a group of EU journalists at the invitation of the Brazilian Poultry Exporters Association to take a look its poultry sector and meet the Brazilian Minister of Agriculture. I'm looking forward to finding for myself how their industry stacks up in terms of animal welfare and quality standards.

Brazil is one of the largest exporters of poultrymeat to the EU and last year, it won the case against the EU on salted chicken. But it continually receives criticism, some unfounded, on its poor welfare standards in the Brazilian industry.

If you want to see what other farmers think of the levy boards then it is worth wading through the results of the survey work that Accenture has recently carried out on behalf of DEFRA. It shows what people think should be the priorities of the new levy board and the six sector companies.

There are some common themes – farmers in every sector think that more emphasis should be put on consumer information and promotion. They also think far less emphasis should be put on activities around farm assurance schemes.