NEWS PAGE
May 12
BRITISH PIG AND POULTRY FAIR — MAY 13-14
Pig Fair catalogue
Pick up this 70-page wallet-size catalogue when you register at Pig Fair. Remember to take it home with you — it makes an excellent year-round guide to who's who in the British pig industry. Extra copies will be available on the Pig World stand. (Stand 77.)
Pig Industry Service Award
The Pig Industry Service Award will be presented by Food and Farming Minister Lord Rooker on the NPA stand (76) at around 10.30am on day one of the show. This year's winner — a producer — will be a popular choice with all producers. Come and give him a round of applause. He's earned it!
Ian's Fellowship report
Ian Campbell will be giving his RAC/PIC Fellowship report at 4pm on Tuesday in the Forum theatre. Let's all be there to support him.
John's sponsored walk and climb
Intervet’s John Richardson will be one of a group of eight people who are doing a sponsored 73 mile walk in June, from Inverness to Fort William, and then climbing Ben Nevis. “We are trying to raise £3,000 for the National Autistic Society — as one of our group works with autistic children, and this I feel is a really worthwhile cause,” he said.
“The walk may prove to be fairly tough but the hardest part for me is asking for sponsorship.” If you can make a small donation please go here: www.justgiving.com/rosienoyce. Intervet's stand at Pig Fair is 107.
NPA — stand 76
Got any ideas for improving the BPEX/NPA campaign to persuade processors to pass more money down the chain? If so, call at the NPA stand and speak to Barney Kay and Zoe Davies. Call anyway — they'd like to see you.
Renew your subscription
See Ann on the Pig World stand (77) to renew your Pig World subscription, and get a 20 percent discount, valid both days of Pig Fair.
Pig Fair New Product Award
Entries for the New Product Award are now closed.
Calling all potential Young NPA members
If your work is connected to the pig industry and you are still considered a youngster in the business, NPA would like to encourage you to join the Young NPA. See Zo Davies on the NPA stand (76) for more information.
Food waste
The Waste Resources Action Programme has published a report saying that the cost of needlessly wasted food to United Kingdom homes is £10 billion a year, £2 billion higher than previously estimated. The report finds that we throw away 6.7m tonnes of food a year. It says stopping the waste of good food could avoid 18m tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents from being emitted a year – the same as taking one in five cars off United Kingdom roads.
Costing the earth
BBC Radio 4’s Costing the Earth programme challenges the notion that livestock farming is necessarily bad for the environment. To listen to the programme, go here.
Incinerators
OBE Group will be exhibiting its Masterburn top-loading incinerators, specifically designed for the pig industry, on stand 118 at Pig Fair.
May 9
Guess-the-price — we have our winner
By Digby Scott
There were 35 correct answers in the BPEX / Pig World competition to guess the Traffic Lights base by Pig Fair.
Visitors to this page picked the winner from these today, by ticking anonymous boxes at random until a winner emerged late this afternoon, after several hundred votes had been logged.
The winner is Muriel Naughton, one of the industry's Stand by Your Ham songbirds. Congratulations on correctly guessing 127p Muriel.
And thanks to everyone who entered the competition — I've never known a competition capture the mood of the moment as much as this one.
I keep saying that we had a thousand entries. The truth is I don't know whether we did or not because there were too many for an innumerate like me to count — the database of entries just kept growing.
I'm grateful to everyone who helped today with the pulling of a winner from our virtual 'hat'.
Although the competition has been a bit of fun to help lighten one of the darkest hours in the industry's history, it had a serious intent... to demonstrate the need for continued price rises going forward, if the industry is to survive. There's a long way still to go.
Muriel is pictured above, on the right.
Where will YOU hang a pig industry banner?
During the pig price crisis, BPEX is spending well over £1m on getting the industry's message to consumers, retailers, processors and politicians.
Producers and hauliers have it in their power to double the effectiveness of the campaign by making use of prime advertising sites across the country — road-side fields, for instance, and the backs and sides of feed lorries.
This point was made by producer Richard Longthorp in a campaign conference call this morning and was immediately pounced on by the rest of the campaigns team, as something to be progressed as quickly as possible.
There are several key messages the industry needs to get across to consumers.
The sector's silver bullet, according to BPEX's Simon Brookes, is that pork is outstandingly good value, even after recent price increases, compared to beef, lamb and even chicken. In these times of credit being squeezed, it is the obvious choice for consumers.
Materials and messages will now be researched by the professionals, and the necessary banners and display boards will be produced.
"Whilst this process is going on it would be useful if everyone in the industry could be thinking about where they will be able to display the promotional material to best effect," said Richard Longthorp.
Some councils are stricter than others in issuing seven-day notices on banners and signs in fields — but seven days is a reasonable time to get a message across, and signs can always be moved to a new location afterwards.
Pig industry finds new army of helpers
The British pig industry has found an army of volunteers to help it get its message across.
The eighteen thousand consumers who have so far signed the industry petition at www.pigsareworthit.co.uk were emailed and ask to help with a texting campaign.
Some 500 responded by downloading a list of radio station texting numbers. In marketing terms this level of uptake is quite exceptional.
It has given the industry's marketeers the clue that these consumers are a valuable resource who really do want to help pig farmers get a higher price.
Out of season
Gordon Ramsay has given an interview to the BBC in which he says British restaurants should be banned from serving out-of-season produce and fined if they ignore the ban. He says this would cut carbon emissions, reduce food miles and improve standards of cooking.
How pork promotions can hurt producers
The question of whether special promotions on pork and pork products are damaging to pig producers is causing some debate at the moment.
This week Sir Ben Gill said, “In their fight for market share, processors have been too keen to volunteer promotional funds to the retailers because it has been too easy in the past to take the money from producers’ pockets."
Another example of how promotions can be counter-productive for producers is Tesco's leg promotion in April, which used imported product.
This exercise was unhelpful to the British pig industry because the reduction in demand by Tesco for British legs meant a lot of legs looking for new homes at short notice. This in turned provoked comments for processors that legs were in “over-supply”.
Export demand for shoulders
Demand for loins and legs generally controls the price of British pigs because these products are under supplied by around 14m and 10m pigs a year respectively.
But the situation may be about to change. There is a good export market for shoulders at present and this may mean increases in domestic prices for sausages and the like, as the raw material cost increases.
This in turn could lead to the unusual situation (for British pigs) of a product that is in over-supply on the domestic market (shoulder meat) dictating higher pig prices, because of a strong export market price.
We're only the regulator
A petition on the No. 10 website called on Prime Minister Gordon Brown to provide financial compensation to all farmers who suffered financial loss as a result of government restrictions on movement following the breach of biosecurity at Pirbright last August.
Government has now responded. It says "The Government's role in relation to the Pirbright site is that of regulator. The outbreak was caused by a lapse in biosecurity on the Pirbright site, and was not caused by the Government's role as a regulator."
http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page15377.asp
May 8
Outdoor pork nomenclature
BPEX and RSPCA are talking about agreed descriptions for different pork production standards — free-range, outdoor-reared etc. A Code of Good Practice may emerge as a result. There has been some controversy recently over use of the term "outdoor pork".
New Spalding abattoir will open soon
The old Hargraves abattoir at Spalding, Lincolnshire, is currently undergoing a major overhaul by Morrisons and should be open and running by June-July. It will take 6,000 pigs a week.
Calling all potential Young NPA members
By Zoe Davies
If your work is connected to the pig industry and you are still considered a youngster in the business, we would like to encourage you to join the Young NPA.
We already have a well established group of over 50 valued members from all parts of the chain including producers, vets, allied industries and processors and are keen that all young people in the industry take advantage of the opportunity to join.
Once you have signed up you will be invited to any visits or meetings that are organised, benefit from reduced rates to attend important industry events and conferences and have the opportunity to network with a much wider variety of people throughout the business and from across the country.
Previous activities have included a visit to Dalehead Foods, Agromek 2007 and the European Pig Producers conference 2007.
We hope that being part of the Young NPA will have a positive impact on both you and the business that you represent. Membership is free and it’s easy to join – just send your contact details to me by email, fax or post.
Or call me at the NPA office if you would like to chat about it first. If you are already a member and haven’t heard from us for a while, or have changed your details, please let me know.
National slurry spreading week
The slurry spreading closed periods proposed by Defra in its NVZ consultation could create a “national slurry spreading week”, fears producer Charlie Allen.
This would result in the same type of pollution caused by slurry spreading in Holland which resulted in a nasty smell across the south-east England recently, he told NPA Producer Group yesterday.
Defra's response to its NVZ consultation will be published before the House of Commons summer recess in July.
European Pig Producers
Some 142 people have so far signed up for the European Pig Producers conference in Norwich, June 5-8. Sponsorship is in place. Finances are looking healthy. Conference title is “How to live with the world’s most sophisticated retailers".
Health conference
English pig producers are now feeding back results from the current BPEX PCV2 vaccination campaign. BPEX plans to disseminate the information it is acquiring at an autumn conference, possibly held in conjunction with NPA.
Anaerobic Digestion and Alternative Waste Technologies
A conference on Anaerobic Digestion and Alternative Waste Technologies will be held on May 22 at The Barbican Centre, London. It will focus on the latest developments in treating waste through new technologies. For more information and to book a place go to: http://www.alternative-waste.co.uk/homepage.asp.
l NPA Trade Directory l Mechanical data l National Pig Association l Defra l BBC weather l
l Environment Agency l Food Standards Agency l Quality Meat Scotland l Scottish Executive l
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