Poultry growth – but will it be at home?
By John Farrant
THE market is positive for eggs and poultry, with potential growth in all sectors, so what are we worried about?
The basic concern was summed up at the Poultry Industry Conference, Blackpool, under the theme Meeting Global Challenges. There is no refuge.
It came from a man who should know.
Wayne Britt is the former CEO of the worlds biggest poultry company, Tyson Foods.
He retired after 28 years of rising through the ranks and now is non-executive chairman of Spectral Fusion Technologies, makers of BoneScan, which detects bone fragments in meat.
He sees limited opportunities in niche markets such as organic and free range, so that most of the industry producing poultry and eggs for the bulk of consumers has to meet the competition head on.
This raises the concern of high costs putting our primary production in danger of being exported overseas.
To a degree this has to happen, but there are a lot of measures that can be taken to delay this loss to the UKs rural economy and to ensure a long term future for many poultry businesses in this country.
They could be summed up under more effective lobbying, food assurance and working closely with our customers to develop our strengths and products, while driving costs down.
A bevy of high-quality speakers explained how all this could be done.
Euro-MP Robert Sturdy is fearful of exporting agricultural production out of the EU.
His recipe for keeping it as long as possible is through more effective lobbying of politicians to prevent restrictive legislation that raises costs and encourages imports that are produced to lower standards.
Such lobbying needs to get in early, to have a say in new legislation before it is drawn up.
Make sure that your Euro MPs know your views on important issues under consideration now, such as food safety, veterinary medicines, animal by-products, labelling and laying cages, he stressed.
Also, you need representation in Brussels to have that vital early influence, he added.
This is already in place for the representation of EU poultry processors through a.v.e.c, of which the British Poultry Council is a member.
Robert Sturdys concerns also extend to EU enlargement, bringing in Easter European countries with much lower labour costs and the World Trade Organization talks where it is vital to bring in the non-trade issues of welfare, environment and labour.
He fears a sell-out of agriculture in favour of other industries.
Views on when the WTO round would be concluded ranged from 2005-2010.
Reassurance came from Defra on both of these major negotiations in the person of Gavin Ross, head of Milk, Pigs, Eggs & Poultry Division, who was standing in for food and farming Minister Lord Whitty.
With further liberalisation of trade to come from the WTO and EU enlargement, Gavin stated that Defra was keeping a close watch on these and other trade agreements to ensure no breaking of rules and to press for extra duties to be applied where appropriate.
On EU enlargement he said that applicants must align on hygiene and welfare standards for full accession. He stressed that sustainable development of a competitive and diverse farming sector that contributes to the rural economy was at the heart of Defras policies.
How the egg sector can get a fair deal through lobbying was the topic taken up by egg producer Julian Madeley, who is just back from six months representing American egg farmers in Washington.
The success of United Egg Producers on behalf of its members was due to unity of the whole industry, representing up to 95% of production, he claimed.
Producers there were prepared to put aside short-term differences for long term benefits.
They were much better at making legislation workable than their equivalents in the UK or EU, where sectional and language differences were a disadvantage.
The businessmans view from Wayne Britt on future survival and success, included getting more help from government through lobbying and extended to greater marketing skills, more consolidation and co-operation.
He underlined the basic benefit of chicken in meeting the demand for low cost protein, resulting in growth of 60% over the past 10 years, compared with 30% for all meat.
Turkey is also clearly gaining from this demand, as Richard Hutchinson of British United Turkeys illustrated in his review of the world turkey market.
The number of breeders is still rising in Europe with demand outstripping performance.
Much of the rise in production was coming from the EU accession countries, such as Hungary, where turkey was always to be found on menus.
The EU was already a major importer, he pointed out.
PIC president Steve Murrells, Tescos director in charge of poultry and egg purchases, had given some sound advice on the way ahead in his opening review, after acknowledging the proud record of eggs and poultry over the past 30 years.
To meet the great challenges for sustaining home production, he concluded: “Be cleaner, greener, safer and more efficient”.
In how to achieve these plus points, he stressed the importance of partnerships between suppliers and retailers in a customer focused food chain.
Answering a question on the possible future use of electronic auctions for obtaining supplies of eggs and poultry, he dismissed it as crude and dangerous for these products, although it may have a role in groceries for contracts of up to a year ahead.
Costs had to be sustainable, he said, later offering assurance on common standards as an aim at Tesco.
“Lobby retailers if imports do not meet your standards,” he invited.
Delegates were also encouraged by several speakers to press the growing food service sector into acknowledging its sources of poultry and eggs.
Areas that should be developed, Steve Murrells believed, were keeping ahead of other meat markets by creating and innovating to delight and to improve the image of intensive production, which was essential to supply the large sector of budget shoppers.
The link in many peoples minds of intensive being unnatural and exploitative needed to be replaced by accepting it as the highest standards of care as it was in human medicine, he listed as a current challenge.
There was no doubt left that an essential part of the defence of our industry was feed and food assurance, from two specialists in these fields, Helen Raine of ABNI and David Clarke of Assured Food Standards.
The level of response to the UKASTA schemes for feed manufacturers underlined that this was the only road, Helen stressed, and home mixers too needed to join to link feed safety into the food chain.
With high levels of support for British Food Standard schemes such as Assured Chicken Production, David put promotion of the little red tractor assurance brand representing all these schemes at the top of his list of future challenges.
One product that seems unlikely to join is Lion Quality eggs.
Amanda Cryer of the British Egg Information Service felt that it was likely to run alongside.
Its three-year revolution is supported in 2002 by a 5m investment by the egg sector which she described.
Part of the budget is to go towards working with retailers to improve the egg fixture.
A vital need to cap all of the good work on the new image for eggs.