Marketing News

 

Foodservice News

The MoD has confirmed that they are listing British Gammon Steaks from 1 Apr 09, in lieu of an imported product. This is equal to a value of £300k per annum.

 

Bacon Connoisseurs Week – Update

Nick Trott from Dukeshill, the Bacon Connoisseurs’ Week Independent Retailer Winner appeared on The Alan Titchmarsh show on ITV (Monday 30th March). He was seen behind a big display table of pork products, and more predominately, bacon. He discussed with Alan, how bacon is cured and went on to let Alan try his ‘award winning’ bacon. He mentioned Bacon Connoisseurs Week in the interview and his award.  The show can be seen online by clicking here.

 

Roadshows End on a High

The last product evaluation of the series this year was held at Haywards Heath this week (Weds 1 April) at the South of England Showground and it saw another record breaking 43 butchers enter 289 products.  With even more butchers and farmers just turning up on the day to have a look at ‘what it’s all about’ and talk to the exhibitors.  The overall winner for this region was Gaterells of Felpham with his Ready Meal of a Pork Fillet with Apricot Stuffing, followed by the Best Sausage in the Show, which was a Pork, Seaweed, Garlic & Shallot Sausage from R A Bevan & Co, Kingston.  The next stage is for all seven regional finalists to be pitted against each other for the chance to become National Champion for the 2009/10 series.  The Champion will then be crowned at the Butchers Hall, London in June.

 

Trade Press

‘Pig Issues’ advertorials will feature in this weekend’s Meat Trades Journal, Bacon Report (3 April) and The Grocer, Meat, Fish & Poultry Supplement (4 April) highlighting the three main marketing activities happening this year.  (1) Clearer Labelling Campaign, (2) Update of the Lovepork website and (3) building on the already successful Sausage and Bacon Week Campaigns.

 

Lidl Goes Large on British

Next week Lidl are promoting the fact that they are stocking British pork and pork products and where applicable are featuring the QSM on packs of sausages, bacon & ham. 

 

Shoulder Out Performs Leg

Volume sales data for the last month (4wk/ending 22 March) has seen shoulder roasting joints out performing leg joints.  The volume of shoulder roast sales increased on last year’s 4wkly sales by 54.5% which equals an extra 891 tonnes, this is compared to leg joints which saw a decrease for the first time in a couple of months, down 36%.

 

Knowledge Transfer

 

Tip of the Week: Vaccines

As the summer approaches ensure that vaccines are stored correctly when removed from the fridge. Vaccines need to be maintained at their recommended temperature (usually around 2 - 8ºC) to remain viable. Check the storage fridge with a min/max thermometer daily and have a suitable system when out in the field, this can be a portable temperature-controlled box, or reuse AI delivery poly boxes for shorter periods of time.

 

Ventilation systems

Ventilation systems are intended to provide optimum living conditions for pigs. A well-managed, functioning, efficient ventilation system effectively draws fresh air into a building and removes stale air containing a proportion of microbes, dust, harmful gases and water vapour. Inefficient ventilation is detrimental to pig and staff performance (particularly on hot days) and costs more to run.

The latest Action for Productivity sheet from BPEX looks at this topic in more detail, focusing mainly on fully controlled and automatically controlled natural ventilation (ACNV) systems. To download a copy click here.

 

EA Q&A on NVZ

The Environment Agency have issued a revised Q & A for the new NVZ rules, a copy can be found by clicking here.

The questions and answers are intended to support the advice given in the set of leaflets ‘Guidance for Farmers in Nitrate Vulnerable Zones’, produced by Defra and the Environment Agency. You can find these on the Defra website. Where appropriate, the answers refer to the relevant leaflet(s).

 

National News:

 

Defra Cost-Sharing Plan

Livestock farmers in England are set to face a compulsory levy to contribute to the cost of managing exotic diseases.

Proposed for introduction in 2012, farmers will be forced to pay an annual fee to help pay for surveillance and preparation for the outbreak of diseases, such as bluetongue, classical swine fever and foot-and-mouth.

The fee will make up half of the £44m Defra spends annually on exotic disease surveillance, and those who refuse to pay the levy will be hit by fines.

How will it work?

The levy will be collected from the newly-established animal health body.

Livestock farmers will be required to register annually the maximum number of animals they keep at any one time of year.

Defra has proposed this is done using a self-declaration form which is filled in each year and is based upon existing livestock registration requirements.

The form will ask farmers to detail the maximum number of animals they kept the previous year, as well as an estimate of the maximum they expect to keep in the current year.

Depending on the type of livestock, the new body will calculate how much levy has to be paid, based on each animal place

 

The amount paid for each animal is based on the estimated gross output of each sector; hence, dairy farmers would pay £4.80/head, while sheep farmers would pay 9p. It will be adjusted each year for differences in actual and estimated numbers.

(Source: FWI)

 

BPEX Paper on Feeding Britain

The Smith Institute, an independent public policy think tank, has published a series of essays on the theme of 'Feeding Britain'. Among them is a contribution from BPEX. The full 'Feeding Britain' publication can be found by clicking here.

 

Cranswick Trading Update

Cranswick ended the year strongly, with total sales in the final quarter 11 per cent higher than the previous year. Full year results are likely to be ahead of market consensus.

Sales of food products increased by 11 per cent. There were notable increases in a number of categories, with pork sales up by 23 per cent, sales of continental products 22 per cent higher and sales of bacon ahead by 15 per cent. Turnover in the pet division, which accounted for 7 per cent of total Company sales in the quarter, was up by 5 per cent.

 

Packington Pigs Stolen

More than 500 pigs have been stolen from a farm in south Staffordshire. The animals, all less than five weeks old, were stolen from Packington Fields Farm, in Hopwas near Tamworth on Thursday.

Farmer Rob Mercer, who estimates the piglets to be worth more than £25,000, said there had not been a theft of pigs on this scale for many years. It is thought the thieves broke down a fence, walked half a mile to the pens and herded them into a truck.

 

£300,000 Pig Health Project

An innovative project to bring together pig farmers across Yorkshire and the Humber to improve the health of pigs worth over £300,000 has just got under way.

It is jointly funded by BPEX and Yorkshire Forward, the Regional Development Agency, using funding from the Rural Development Programme for England (RDPE).  

RDPE will fund up to 70% of the cost of the first phase of the project which will take about a year to complete.

The initiative will be producer driven with the twin aims of eradicating specific endemic diseases and improving overall health.

The first year will be spent building commitment from the producers in the region, mapping the health status and location of pig units and putting together the necessary protocols.  The second stage will be about putting into action the plans for health improvement drawn up by the farmers and vets in Yorkshire and the Humber.

 

International News

 

US Pig Report

USDA's quarterly Hogs and Pigs report showed more hogs kept for marketing than expected, but fewer kept for breeding, leading analysts to call the report bearish for hog prices in the short term, but bullish in the long term.

USDA reported 59.4 million hogs kept for marketing, a 2.7 per cent decline from a year ago, but 0.5 per cent more than the market was expecting. It reported 6 million sows kept for breeding, nearly 1 percent fewer than analysts predicted, according to a pre-report poll by Dow Jones.

Even with fewer hogs kept for breeding, however, the number of hogs saved per litter continued to climb, making analysts nervous about how much real reduction in hog production will result. USDA reported 9.48 pigs saved per litter in the December-February period, up 2.6 per cent from a year ago and nearly 1 per cent higher than analysts expected.

 

Dutch Pig Exports

TOPIGS exported 355 gilts from the Netherlands to Japan in March. This is the first time that TOPIGS breeding material has been sent to Japan. The TOPIGS 20 gilts of various ages came from Van Beek SPF Varkens in Lelystad.

The gilts flew to Tokyo via Schiphol. After a state quarantine period the gilts will go to their final destination, a group of cooperating pig farmers. This group of independent pig farms produce about one-third of Japanese pigs.

In June a second consignment with purebred line animals and terminal boars will be sent from the SPF nucleus breeding farm of TOPIGS in Canada.

 

CSF in Russia

The Russian veterinary authorities have sent a report to the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) about three new cases of classical swine fever (CSF).

It covers three new cases of classical swine fever. The first, which started on 1 March, involved two animals on a game farm in Urvansky in the republic of Kabardino-Balkarskaya. Both animals died. The second case, two days later, involved 16 animals in a backyard herd of 248 animals in Prigorodny in North Ossetia. The sixteen animals were destroyed and 154 other animals were slaughtered. The third case started on 15 March in Apanasenkovsky in Stravropol Krai. Forty-five pigs on a collective farm died and the remainder were destroyed.

 

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