NEWS PAGE
May 14
Webmaster is away for a few days.
May 13
Best New Product at Pig Fair 2008
Choosing a winner from an extremely strong field of entries was no easy task for judges Stuart Bosworth and Gerry Brent today. But perhaps no one will be too surprised by their winner... Merial's PCV2 vaccine Circovac. Andrew Buglass of Merial is pictured above with the two judges, receiving the Best New Product Trophy from Pig World editor Sam Walton. Full report, with judges' citation, in June Pig World.
A new house for Winnie...
Marianne Hill, of Vitality Farm, Wallingford, spent a lot of time gazing at a new Booth ark at Pig Fair today, wishing she could afford to buy it for Winnie.
Little did she realise the ark was already hers, kindly donated by James Booth as his way of saying thank you, on behalf of the industry, for everything Marianne and Winnie did to help make the March 4 London Rally such a success.
After this surprise, Messrs Hugh Crabtree and Digby Scott took a (nearly) speechless Marianne to the BOCM PAULS stand — without telling her why — where she was delighted to learn from John Cusson that if she called on merchants Charles Hunt and Partners at Wallingford, a tonne of feed was awaiting her for Winnie, and furthermore she could take it away in bags, as and when she needed it.
This was the industry's way of saying thank you to Marianne for looking after Winnie.
British Pig and Poultry Fair
Pig Industry Service Award 2008
This year’s winner is Fred Henley, of Seaton Ross, East Yorkshire.
Above: "I'd like to know," said Food and Farming Minister Lord Rooker when he presented Fred Henley with the Pig Industry Service Award today, "exactly what you did to win this."
Trust us, Minister, Fred has been active on many fronts over the years, and you really don't want to know the detail.
JUDGES' CITATION
By Richard Longthorp, Chairman of Judges
Fred Henley has, for many years, been the down-to-earth core at the heart of the English pig industry.
He works hard at his ‘day job’ and then, when he is through with all the manual work and the ever-increasing amount of administration it entails, he gets stuck into his campaigning work for the industry.
Never comfortable with berating others about what they should be doing about the problem, Fred simply rolls up his sleeves and asks what he can do to help.
Deceptively posing as the archetypal rural serf, complete with trademark bobble hat, Fred combines a stubborn and apparently unsophisticated willingness to get stuck into practical issues with laser sharp, but pragmatic, powers of perception to identify and highlight key issues.
Also with a brutal honesty, he constantly reminds industry leaders of what the real concerns of pig producers are. All executives need a Fred Henley to help keep their feet on the ground.
From high profile events such as recording Stand by Your Ham to the much less high profile but painstaking and crucially important, Porkwatch, Fred has always been on hand. In addition to being a willing worker, he is also very, very able.
It is not only the pig industry that benefits from Fred’s willingness to get stuck in. As soon as he had finished having this photograph taken, he set off down to his local village to cut the grass on the village green and for an elderly resident. He’s a passionate and caring man who manages to do it all with a discreet and quiet modesty that redefines the word ‘understated’.
His pig buildings will be empty
By Digby Scott
Fred Henley has around a hundred finisher pigs left from his current batch. When they have gone to slaughter in a few days, his pig buildings will be empty. And they may stay empty.
A life-long pig-keeper, who is much respected in the British pig industry, Fred has very nearly had enough of the hard work it takes to produce quality, high-welfare pork, for which retailers and processors consistently refuse to pay him an economically-viable price.
“My buildings will probably stay empty until the retailers and processors come to their senses,” he said.
“I will never go back to keeping sows and breeding slaughter pigs from them. All I am prepared to be in the future is an opportunist buyer of store pigs to fatten. And I will only do that if the sums add up.
”All across the country colleagues of mine are taking the same decision. In a few months time it will become clear to retailers and processors - who have always made a good living out of our labours - that this time they have been too clever by half.
“They have willfully jeopardised the supply of British pork, which is produced to significantly higher welfare standards than most imported pork - and all for the sake of an easy buck.”
Half of Fred’s farm is now down to grass under the government’s Countryside Stewardship scheme. And now the pigs are going too.
“I will continue to campaign for the industry but it seems tragic to me that even though there is a growing global food crisis, this farm, and many others like it, can no longer afford to produce food for British consumers.”
Fred Henley (61) is the third generation of Henleys to farm at Green Farm, Seaton Ross. His grandfather used to breed and export Large Black pigs. The farmhouse used to be in the centre of the village but 18 years ago Fred and his wife Jane decided to build a new farmhouse a mile out of the village. They took the name Green Farm with them - so they didn’t even have to change their address.
Fred and Jane (who is librarian at York University) have two grown-up daughters, Lizzie and Alison, a grown-up son, John, and a baby grand-daughter, Rachel.
• Read about Fred's life, in Fred's own words, in June Pig World.
May 12
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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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