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Friday July 2, 2010

Traffic Lights

Why weren't these people more closely supervised by the MHS vets who are responsible for ensuring that animal welfare and biosecurity standards are fully maintained? Traffic Lights commentary.

A and G Barber

A and G Barber Limited has decided to suspend cull sow and boar slaughtering at its Essex abattoir with immediate effect.

This follows adverse publicity arising from undercover filming (see Members Area for link to video) carried out at the abattoir during April and the associated cancellation of meat orders from its European supply chain.

A and G Barber Limited used to handle around 25 percent of the United Kingdom weekly cull sow throughput of around 3,500 head.

wednesday june 30, 2010

Best pig unit in the world?

By Digby Scott

Nearly 300 women are kept under lock and key at Foston Hall, near Derby. This is where they sent Maxine Carr, after she had been found guilty of covering up for child-murderer Ian Huntley.

But prisoners have rights, and the women at Foston Hall will be warm as toast during the Derbyshire winters, if Martin Barker of Midland Pig Producers has his way.

He hopes to pipe hot water and bioelectricity to the prison from what will be one of the highest-welfare, most environmentally-efficient pig farms in the world.

It will also be neighbour-friendly, with sophisticated water and charcoal scrubbers to eliminate the smells usually associated with pig farms.

The proposed farrow-to-finish development for 2,500 sows will cut Britain's imported food and fertiliser costs, whilst producing green energy, locally-grown feed for the pigs, and quality-assured British pork.

Ministers and senior civil servants from all over Europe are watching the project with interest. They see it as a high-welfare model for the future of food production in an over-populated, environmentally-compromised world.

Of particular interest to animal welfarists is the non-restraint farrowing system designed by Midland Pig Producers and launched at this year's British Pig and Poultry Fair.

Both of the unit's two maternity rooms will be fitted with 360-Degree Farrowers, which give sows freedom to move around, whilst protecting piglets and stockman.

Because of this and other welfare measures — including automatic dispensing of chopped straw, and underfloor heating and cooling — Midland Pig Producers hopes to be able to operate a no tail-docking regime.

If the development is granted planning permission — which looks likely — it will include a United States-style below-ground biodigester which will produce odourless solid and odourless clear liquid fertiliser for local farms to grow grain, which will be milled locally for the pigs.

In addition to processing slurry from the pigs and turning it into green electricity and odourless fertiliser, the biodigester would be able to process waste from the Foston Hall kitchens, which would otherwise go into landfill.

The process creates a large amount of heat, which can be used for heating the pig unit and could also be piped to the prison.

Pictured above: How Pig World covered the Midland Pig Producers 'Green Circle' concept, back in 2008.

Tuesday June 29, 2010

Agencies to merge

To save money, Defra will merge Animal Health and the Veterinary Laboratories Agency as soon as possible, environment secretary Caroline Spelman announced today. Defra will also abolish the Commission for Rural Communities.

Legislation needed to control supermarkets, say MEPs

New legislation is needed to ensure fair returns to farmers and transparent prices to consumers, by enforcing fair competition through the food supply chain, said the European Parliament agriculture committee yesterday.

Suggestions as to how to ensure fairness through the food chain by tacklíng dominant positions, unfair commercial and contractual practices and late payments, and also by improving the bargaining position of farmers, are set out in a report by José Bové.

This report responds to a Commission communication on reforms needed to improve farmers' returns and consumer price transparency.

Penalties and a complaint mechanism should be put in place to discourage unfair behaviour by market players, says the committee.

To monitor relations between producers and retailers and if necessary rebalance them, a European Union instrument could be put into effect through specialised bodies in member countries.

Actions to be taken should include an analysis of possible misuse of private labels, i.e. on retailers' "own brand" products, and a pilot project to create a European "observatory" of farm prices and margins, it adds.

The Commission is urged to propose legislation to limit dominant market positions at every stage of the supply chain, "including the food processing industry and retailers", says the text, which adds that companies engaging in unfair practices should be "named and shamed".

Top European traders, processors, wholesalers and retailers should have to report their market shares on key food items annually, and the Commission is urged to make a proposal to this end. This would allow all market players to estimate demand and supply trends, say MEPs.

A recently-approved European food price monitoring tool should be made more user friendly and cover a larger number of food products, so as to offer better comparability of data and make prices more transparent both for consumers and for farmers, adds the committee.

Standard contracts could be useful tools in preventing practices such as the alteration of contract terms, late payments, resale at a loss and unjustified listing fees, say MEPs. In some sectors, these contracts could be made compulsory.

Specifically, the Commission is urged to examine the effects of "contract farming", imposed by buyers, which can weaken farmers' bargaining position. Finally, the committee asks that the Commission to table legislation to reduce the maximum period allowed for payments from buyers to producers to 30 days for all.

Voluntary ban

The Danish pig industry is introducing a voluntary two-year ban on the use of cephalosoporines, a class of antibiotics that are critically important for the treatment of humans in hospitals. It is hoped the ban will curb the occurrence of resistant bacteria.

Mortality is reducing

Caught up in a national scandal about high mortality in its super-litters, the Danish pig industry is pinning its hope on the cause of the problem — extreme genetics — also being the solution.

The industry was caught on the back foot recently when a television programme revealed to consumers that around 25,000 piglets die in Denmark every day ("Danish government to probe unacceptable deaths", Pig World, July 20190).

But now Danish producers are pointing out that super-litter mortality is gradually reducing as a result of a more balanced genetics programme.

Since 2005, sows have averaged 2.1 percent more pigs that survive beyond the first five days, says the industry.

And one geneticist says it can be ethically responsible to breed more piglets on a sow than the sow has nipples for, as piglets can be moved to another sow.

Monday June 28, 2010

Derek Wells

Derek Wells (72), formerly of the Meat and Livestock Commission, died unexpectedly on Saturday, at West Suffolk Hospital, Bury St Edmunds.

Derek was well thought of in the industry, and even after he had retired from MLC producers felt they could call him at home and seek his advice on pig-related matters.

Danes send more pigs to Germany

Danish pig producers are sending even more weaners to Germany this year. From January to April they exported more than 2.4m weaners, in search of better prices — an increase of five percent over the same period last year. Should this level be maintained through the rest of the year it will bring the total loss to Danish abattoirs in 2010 of 7.5m pigs. At 375,000, exports of slaughter pigs were slightly lower in the first four months of this year than for the same period last year.

'Place of farming' labelling will
take at least four years

Renate Sommer, the German Christian Democrat who guided plans for mandatory origin and nutrition labelling through the European Parliament, believes it will be at least four years before they become law.

Ministers have to approve the proposals and this is unlikely on the first reading, she said. "I think we will reach agreement, but there will be transition periods and I think that this legislation will come into force at the earliest in four years, which means in 2014.

"But food producers and retailers know what they will have to do and I can imagine that quite a lot of them will introduce the new rules earlier than they have to by law."

TVC report

Supply continued to improve as the number of pigs coming through the system that were affected by the cold New Year dwindled. Tulip and Woodheads both stood-on with their contract prices. The euro lost ground ending the week up at 82.36p – a loss of 1.21p on the week. TVC report.

Scotland wants a voice in Brussels

Farming and fishing is more important to the Scottish economy than they are in England, says Scotland's rural affairs spokesman Richard Lochhead. Rather than relying on Defra ministers to put the United Kingdom's case in Brussels, he wants Scotland to have its own voice. If this happened, English farmers would benefit too — as the case for United Kingdom agriculture would be put more strongly.

Medicated feed to be phased out

Dutch animal feed compounders say they will work with pig farmers and vets to phase out in-feed antibiotics as soon as possible. Although Dutch pigs have received less medicated feed in recent years, there is still a risk of healthy pigs eating the feed, which ultimately could contribute to antibiotic resistance in humans.

Too suffocating

Over 90 percent of pig producers surveyed say Germany's pork assurance scheme 'Quality and Safety' is too suffocating. Producers are particularly irritated by tghe continuous adding of new criteria, some of which goes further than national legislation.

Unicorn meat

The United States National Pork Board has made itself look rather humourless, by taking umbrage at an April Fool's joke which referred to canned unicorn as "the new white meat".

Despite the fact that unicorn meat is a rare commodity — in Britain only Waitrose stocks it — the National Pork Board fired off a 12-page warning to website Think Geek for claiming "Pâté is passé. Unicorn is the the new white meat".

"Yes, it's funny. But if you don't respond, you are opening your trademark up to challenges," said a National Pork Board spokesman.

The website in question has apologised and said it never intended to cause a national crisis.

Scotland hopes to go it
alone on animal health

Scotland may take control of its own animal health budget from April next year, but it is not a done deal yet. Rural affairs spokesman Richard Lochhead says he will be working closely with Defra to put together a detailed proposal.

Livestock producers in England will, in due course, be required to meet the cost of Defra's £20m animal health budget, including the cost of clearing up future outbreaks of notifiable disease. If Scotland succeeds in its bid for devolution of the animal health budget, it will probably place a lower cost burden on Scottish farmers.

German Hybrid

Two German pig genetics organisations join forces next month to form "German Hybrid" which aims to create breeding stock to meet the needs of the German slaughter pig market.

friday june 25, 2010

Pig prices ease as euro weakens

With no 'R' in the month, strawberries and Wimbledon used to be more of a problem for pig sellers before fridges were invented. But in modern times this has proved to be much less of a challenge. Traffic Lights commentary continued.

thursday June 24, 2010

Double standards

In a first meeting today with the new European Union trade commissioner, Karel De Gucht, Copa president Padraig Walshe warned, "The Commission cannot go on asking European Union producers to meet costly regulations and then turn round and say we'd rather import cheaper food regardless of how it is produced".

IPPC thresholds

Pig producers with 200 sows or more may have to get used to the idea of applying for an IPPC permit after all.

Lobbying by NFU and NPA, supported by Defra, has helped prevent the current revision of IPPC from including lower thresholds for pigs. But thresholds will be scrutinised again by the end of next year.

This measure was agreed in three-way negotiations between the European Commission, Council and Parliament this week, and will be voted on by the European Parliament next month.

The three-way negotiations also agreed to review, in 2012, whether to bring cattle and manure spreading into IPPC.

The environment department had wanted all these extensions included in the current revision of IPPC but failed, following lobbying by farmer organisations.

By getting agreement to review these issues at an early date, Brussels is signalling, as so often in the past, that it rarely accepts defeat of its plans as final.

Current IPPC threshold is 750 indoor sows or more than 2,000 indoor finisher places for pigs of 30kg or more.

Some existing IPPC permit holders in Britain would welcome the threshold being reduced. They are producing pigs at a disadvantage because of the high cost of getting and keeping an IPPC permit.

Cheap meat threat to grain prices

European cereal growers are concerned that cheap beef, pigmeat and poultrymeat from South America will hit their wheat and barley prices.

"With 60 percent of cereals dedicated to feed for the European Union livestock sector, any concessions given by the European Union to open markets to meat imports from Mercosur countries will badly affect the European Union cereals market balance," warned Paul Temple, chairman of Copa's cereals committee, yesterday.

Copa sees European Union cereal production being down 1.3 percent this year at 286m tonnes. Barley will experience the biggest drop (-7.4 percent), largely because it is no longer eligible for automatic intervention storage. Soft wheat production is estimated to increase 3.3 percent. Copa forecast.

wednesday june 23, 2010

Pig industry promises to play
its part in cutting national debt

The English pig industry promised today to respond to the Prime Minister's call to help cut the national debt. It has formed a high-level working group which will embrace producers, feed compounders, processors and many others to pinpoint ways to eliminate waste in the national pigmeat supply chain. Full report in July issue of Pig World.

Advertising ban

The Veterinary Medicines Directorate is planning to ban the advertising of antimicrobials to farmers. This may trigger an increase in the cover price of Pig World.

The National Office of Animal Health, which represents the United Kingdom animal medicines industry, doubts the ban will reduce antibiotic resistance profiles.

"We must ensure this proposed ban does not impinge on providing farmers with essential information relating to the health and welfare of their animals," it says.