Author Archives: Editor

About Editor

Hailing originally from the UK, Ali Spencer has spent over 25 years working with the New Zealand trade not only here in New Zealand, but also in the UK and Europe. She regularly contributes meat industry material for Food New Zealand and more occasionally for Vetscript. In the past, she has also contributed material for Deer Industry News, NZ Meat Producer and European News (the former NZ Meat Board’s European newsletter).

Input sought on animal welfare proposals

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Meat exporters, processors and producers have an opportunity to give their input, alongside other interested parties, to the Government’s proposed changes to New Zealand’s animal welfare system.

Primary Industries Minister David Carter says the proposals set a strategic direction for animal welfare and improve the way the current Animal Welfare Act 1999 operates.

“Animal welfare matters. It matters because how we treat animals says something important about us as a society. It also matters for New Zealand’s reputation because our trading partners and international consumers rightly expect us to maintain high standards of animal welfare.”

The proposed national strategy, the first of its kind, will canvass the views of stakeholders with animal welfare interests, identify the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and set a vision for New Zealand’s animal welfare system into the future, the Minister says.

“The proposed changes to the Animal Welfare Act will clarify the way it operates and make it easier to enforce.”

Radical change is not proposed, as the suggested values, outcomes and approaches are already implicit in the system, neither is it seeking to lift standards, the Ministry for Primary Industries’ discussion paper says. A key proposal is that codes of welfare, which currently set the standards for animal welfare, are replaced with a combination of regulations and guidelines. Regulations will be directly enforceable in law. Guidelines will provide information and advice but will have no legal effect.

Delivering the strategy will require action from the meat industry in terms of implementing industry schemes to improve welfare; recognising and building stockmanship skills, educating members about best practice and meeting standards, measuring animal welfare performance and engaging with the public and consumers. It also encourages continuing collaboration in setting standards, co-investing in research, contingency planning and the existing joint Government/industry initiative to improve animal welfare compliance.Many of these actions are already in place.

The closing date for submissions is 28 September 2012. Read more about how to make a submission and to read the discussion paper.

Cooper ‘walking the talk’

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Cooper ‘walking the talk’

The purchase of a 245 hectare sheep and beef finishing farm last year means that Siver Fern Farms’ chief executive is now ‘walking the talk’, according to an article in the Otago Daily Times. As a farm owner, the article says, Cooper better understands farmers’ problems and challenges and is using that knowledge to help shape the company to meet those needs. Read more …

Games legacy, global campaign against hunger starts

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British Prime Minister David Cameron with Michel Temer, Vice-President of Brazil, Football legend Pele (left) and Olympic double gold medallist Mo Farah (right) at the Olympic hunger summit in Downing Street, 12 August 2012. Photo: Foreign & Commonwealth Office (some rights reserved).

A more serious tone is emerging post-Games, with Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron and Brazilian Vice-President Michael Temer taking the opportunity to put the spotlight on helping millions of children suffering from malnutrition in the the world’s poorest countries.

Olympic double gold medallist Mo Farah, Olympic great Haile Gebrselassie and football legend Pele, who have all campaigned to end the cycle of hunger and poverty by tackling their root causes, joined the leaders, along with others including non-governmental organisations and private sector, at Number 10 Downing Street last Sunday – the closing day of the Games – to highlight a push to tackle global hunger ahead of the next Olympics to be held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.

Long term exposure to a poor and inadequate diet and repeated infections have left 170 million children in the world suffering from stunting – a condition which stops children from fulfilling  their potential because their bodies do not grow and develop properly. The United Nation’s World Health Assembly recently agreed a new global target of a 40 percent reduction in the number of stunted children by 2025.

The ‘hunger summit’ has been inspired by a declaration by the G8 at its last summit in the US in May, where President Barack Obama announced the creation of a new alliance on food security with African leaders and the private sector as part of an effort to lift 50 million people out of poverty over the next decade. Alongside three initiatives announced by the UK at the London summit. other initiatives are underway by India, the EU, the World Food Programme and the Children’s Investment Fund Foundation to make an impact on global levels of undernutrition, according to Downing Street. The UK will take up G8 chairmanship from next year.

An article in The Guardian newspaper says that the initiative has received ‘cautious welcome’. Campaigners argue that while control rests with the larger companies, it takes away the power of small farmers to feed their people.

The article quotes the Gates’ Foundation head of agriculture, Sam Dryden, who attended the summit, acknowledging the pressure of large corporations – as well as agricultural subsidies in the West – in squeezing out smallholder farmers in Africa.

“Agriculture is a local experience, eating is a local experience,” he is quoted as saying. “It is important that African countries develop their own systems and that smallholder farmers grow the crops they want to grow.”

 

 

Congratulations Iron Maidens

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London’s 2012 Olympic Games is over and three of Beef + Lamb NZ Inc’s Iron Maidens are heading home from the 30th Olympiade laden with their medals. Congratulations to BMX cyclist Sarah Walker for her silver medal earned late last week. This added to the bronze medals earned by Rebecca Scown and Juliette Haigh for their earlier success in the women’s pairs (rowing). All of the athletes did a fabulous job and did the country – not forgetting the New Zealand beef and lamb industry – proud.

Market will cope with extra lambs

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The market should be able to cope with the expected one million more lambs this season, suggests meat industry commentator Allan Barber.

Responding to recently released figures from B+LNZ Ltd’s Economic Service Barber points out that last year’s 4.4 percent reduction led sheep numbers to an all time low and that this season saw a bounceback of 2.6 percent, largely from an increase in ewe hoggets.

“Providing adverse weather doesn’t cause larger than anticipated lamb losses, there is every reason to expect one million more lambs on the ground this season,” he suggests, adding that this will prompt the question as to whether the markets can absorb the extra lambs, given the flat state of most overseas economies and the significant amount of inventory clogging up the pipeline.

“Past experience suggests that the pipeline will free up, so buyers will hopefully start to place orders again in the not too distant future. In addition, the growth last season meant that farmers held back stock and continued to put weight on. At the same time, meat exporters failed to give the right market signals soon enough, because they had to keep prices high to secure throughput,” explains Barber.

“Assuming the law of climatic averages reasserts itself, the coming season will return to more normal conditions. Therefore, the conflicting messages of procurement and market price will not be so far out of kilter again and supply and demand will be more complementary.

“If not, we will have to pray for an outbreak of rational behaviour from producers and processors!”

Barber notes that the changing nature of land use in New Zealand can be seen from the fact that the North Island is now home to more sheep than the South Island for the first time in living memory. At the same time, the South Island, assisted by irrigation, now has 35 percent of the country’s dairy cows, “a proportion which was inconceivable 15 years ago,” he says.

 

New videos for New Zealand venison

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A new series of videos, produced for Deer Industry New Zealand, is showing British consumers how to cook New Zealand venison.Young and talented British celebrity chef Sophie Wright, a former NZ-UK Link Foundation Culinary Challenge award winner, demonstrates below how to make Venison Wellington.

Other recipes from Sophie, including Venison Ragout, Venison Pie and how to cook venison steaks perfectly, are included in the series produced by British media production company Breeze and Freeze for Deer Industry New Zealand.

All have been added to Deer Industry New Zealand’s You Tube Channel DINZVMSM, which features culinary and butchery demonstrations of New Zealand venison by executive chef Graham Brown and Michael Coughlin, amongst others.

 

Fast Fresh n Tasty

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Silver Fern Farms’ lamb and venison are two of the ingredients being used in a handy dandy, recipe-to-shop smartphone application produced here in New Zealand, by Wellington-based digital media company ClickSuite.

The company’s research showed a large number of people surf the web for culinary inspiration when they are in the supermarket and are hungry for new recipe ideas to add to their average five to seven recipe repertoire. The app, which was developed with plenty of hands on consumer testing (and tasting), features local producers and introduces new recipes each season incorporating relevant produce.

Just one example of what the users see to tempt them into trying Silver Fern Farms’ retail packs of venison medallions.

“It took real vision for Silver Fern Farms to jump on board before the app was launched,”  says ClickSuite’s managing director Emily Loughnan, adding that she’s excited now that the use of the app “is truly bringing in extraordinary stats.”

Reportedly selling like hot cakes – the Fast, Fresh n Tasty app was said to be recently at the top of the Apple App Store list outselling Jamie Oliver’s and Nigella Lawson’s own – and, more importantly, being used regularly, with over 12,000 accessing it last month. Nominated for three awards in the 2012 TVNZ Marketing Awards – best new emerging business, best technology and best marketing awards – Loughnan says it’s still early days but plans are to take it global, using seasonal produce in other markets.

The NZ$5.29 app was reviewed recently at sciblogs.

 

Have your say on proposed NAIT rules

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Comments are invited on the new proposed regulations governing the National Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme in a discussion paper issued for public consultation by the Ministry for Primary Industries.

The proposed regulations are for infringement offences and for establishing a panel to consider applications for access to the NAIT information system.

The discussion paper sets out 12 proposed infringement offences.It also sets out six proposed regulations for establishing the access panel that will consider applications to access data held in the NAIT information system.

Submissions must be received by 5pm on Wednesday 5 September 2012.

To review the discussion paper and for details of how to make a submission click here.

Forming a ‘coalition of the willing’ more important for Boot Camp, says Barber

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Forming a ‘coalition of the willing’ – those who want to work together to get further up the value chain – is more important than forming a new Agri-Food Board, says meat industry commentator Allan Barber.

In an item published online last week on interest.co.nz, he writes that although the proposed Agri-Board will be discussed at the forthcoming agri-food chief executives’ Boot Camp at Stanford University, “it is unlikely to be the main thrust of the gathering, which is intended to generate alignment an co-operation between and within agri-foods sectors.”

While there is “much logic and common sense” in the recent Riddet Institute’s report Call to Arms, calling for a trebling of agri-foods turnover, there is “nagging suspicion that it is just another strategy document, which, despite its stated intentions, will not result in a significant shift in behaviour,” he says.

He suspects that among the Boot Camp participants there will be many of those people who would be expected to be on an Agri-Foods board. “However, they will be too busy getting on with translating ideas into action to have time to worry about joining another board.”

Read his full article here …