BPEX Weekly: 24 June 2010

Marketing News

New Jamie Pork Range

Jamie Oliver believes good ingredients are key to great tasting food so he has created a new range of fresh pork and sausages showcasing the best cuts of British pork. The range has been developed to educate, inspire and encourage everyone to experience delicious, high quality food.
The products launch this week in Tesco stores across the United Kingdom and the range includes some fantastic offerings: 2 thick old school pork chops with nicked fat for great crackling, neck fillets with a unique seasoning and a wedge of lemon, perfectly seasoned thick Cumberland sausages and beautiful coarse and meaty Italian-style sausages packed with loads of different flavours including red wine, fennel and cured meat.

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Knowledge Transfer

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Consumer groups voiced dismay today after Euro-MPs rejected the most popular form of food nutrition labelling
Instead the European Parliament voted for an alternative system of "Guideline Daily Amounts" (GDAs), in the wake of intense food industry lobbying.
The European Consumers' group BEUC accused MEPs of caving in to pressure by rejecting what the organisation says is the simplest and most informative advice on healthy eating.
The traffic light system involves marking food packaging with red, amber or green symbols depending on the levels of sugar, fat and salt in the contents.
BEUC says it has been endorsed by consumer groups, public health organisations and doctors, and is already in use in some of Europe's major supermarkets.
Monique Goyens, director general of BEUC, said: "Despite being presented with a wealth of independent research confirming that the vast majority of consumers wanted the colour coding system, MEPs have mystifyingly voted against it.
"One wonders how we are to convince lawmakers that the fight against obesity and the battle to improve public health needs to start with action today, not tomorrow.
"There is no doubt that today's vote is a very, very serious setback."
MEPs have faced intensive lobbying by sectors of the food industry which claim the system is so simplistic that products could be shunned on the basis of one "red" reading for one ingredient which overshadows more positive health ratings for other contents.
The leader of Britain's Labour MEPs, Glenis Willmott, said the plan for a system of traffic-light labels had produced "a storm of lobbying activity" including, she claimed, "the circulation of false and misleading information about the proposals".
She went on: "If we're serious about tackling heart disease and obesity, we have to help people understand how much salt, fat and sugar is in their food.
"That's particularly true for products like ready meals and prepacked sandwiches where the label is the only way of knowing how healthy something is."
But the GDA scheme which was approved would mean food would have to show its calorie, sugar, salt and fat content on the front of packs.

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Case Studies Wanted

The Knowledge Transfer (KT) team would like to hear from units already achieving two tonnes of pig meat per sow per year, or those who have taken great leaps to get there quite recently.
It is possible and it would be great to understand more about the practicalities of achieving it on an English pig unit. If you would like to get involved in the campaign and be proud of what you do, please contact your regional KT Manager or Helen Thoday on 07973 701202.

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National News:

Free Seminars

Two free seminars highlighting new opportunities for livestock farmers to diversify and expand their businesses and boost returns will be held in the South West region on Thursday, 1 July.
Hosted by animal feed company, BOCM PAULS, the events will focus on options for the producers to move into new fields, such as the pig industry, as well as contract egg production and "the complete beef business supply system".
Speakers from BQP, the UK's premier integrated pig farming business, Lohmann GB, which is the leading supplier of day-old chicks to the egg laying sector, and Blade Farming, which specialises in supplying quality beef to top UK retailers, will spell out the range of choices currently available in these sectors for farmers who are keen to expand their operations.
A representative from Lloyds TSB Agriculture will also be on hand at both conferences to talk to the delegates about financial matters.
In an effort to ensure as many farmers as possible are able to attend these important events, one seminar will be held at Sedgemoor Auction Centre at Junction 24 on the M5, starting at 11am, while the other will be held at Newbury Rugby Club, Newbury, Berkshire at 6pm.

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International News:

Cancer Study on Meat

A recent European study found significantly lower levels of lung cancer in people whose blood contained higher amounts of compounds found in poultry and meat.
Regardless of smoking habits, people with above average amounts of vitamin B6 and methionine (an amino acid) in their blood faced less than half the risk of developing lung cancer as compared with participants with below average levels.
Vitamin B6 is found in meat, fish, potatoes and whole grains, while methionine occurs in meats, fish, seeds, nuts and cereals.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, examined blood samples from nearly 2,670 volunteers who were free of cancer at the beginning of the study. Researchers tracked cancer incidence for an average of five years. The research is part of the EPIC study of 520,000 European volunteers — the largest study of diet and nutrition in the world.
"The size of this study and the strong association observed provide confidence that the association is real," said researcher Paul Brennan of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, in a statement. The IARC led the research, which was funded by the World Cancer Research Fund.
Study coordinator Paulo Vineis of Imperial College London called the findings "the strongest evidence to date of a link between diet and lung cancer" in a statement.

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New Code of Practice

AFS has revised the Industry Code of Practice for On-Farm Feeding to make sure that it is up to date and takes into account any changes to legislation since the previous version was produced in August 2006. The code provides all those involved in the feeding of farmed livestock with a simple explanation of the feed hygiene regulations and a guide to best practice. It contains good practical clear advice, without being overly technical, on a subject which can be extremely complicated. Please find attached a pdf copy of the revised Code.
The main changes relate to the registration and approval requirements (section 2) which all Red Tractor farm assurance assessors have been aware of since the changes were introduced in January 2008.
To download the code, click here.

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Unicorn Meat?

Pork board reacts to April Fools' Day joke on unicorn meat 24 Jun 2010
The US National Pork Board (NPB) has sent a 12-page warning to the web site ThinkGeek.com after having offered canned unicorn meat as an April Fools' Day joke.
The board demanded that the web site stop infringing on its slogan. The 'new' product used the tagline 'Pâté is passé. Unicorn – the new white meat'. The site added: "Caviar is so 1980s. Unicorn is the sparkling, crunchy, savory meat of today's elite."
Pork, however, is branded as 'the other white meat' by the NPB and the Pork Checkoff in the United States. The issue is purely legal, confirmed NPB vice president of domestic marketing Ceci Snyder. "Yes, it's funny. But if you don't respond, you are opening your trademark up to challenges."

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Cheap Meat Threat

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.

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