Venison and lamb was on the menu in Auckland recently for a New Zealand Guild of Foodwriters debate – ‘Are foodies pretentious tossers?‘ See which side won on Lauraine Jacob’s blog …
Are foodies pretentious tossers?
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In the news this week …
We’re starting a new weekly round-up of the week’s top meaty news items. Changes to shipping arrangements have been front page news here in New Zealand and will probably be on the minds of delegates for next Monday’s Red Meat Sector Conference in Queenstown. But there’s also been a ‘world first’ for venison scanning, among other items.
Starting from next month, ports in Wellington and Nelson will be added to Maersk’s Southern Star run, which links New Zealand directly to the Malaysian hub port Tanjung Pelepas, according to the Dominion Post. The more reliable service with the dedicated hub will attract chilled meat exporters, Centreport’s operations general manager Steve Harris is quoted as saying, ” … because the time that the product is on the shelf in Europe … is critical.”
This followed the news, earlier in the week when shippers Maersk and Hamburg-Sud announced that they are withdrawing container pickups from the Port of Timaru, slicing $6 million off that Port’s annual revenue and resulting in the loss of about 50 port jobs. The service will be streamlined and will now operate from Napier to Otago. The new arrangements will come into place in mid-September, just prior to the start of the new meat export season.
Also in Timaru, in what’s said to be a “world first for venison scanning”, meat scanning technology already used for lamb and cattle is to be introduced for deer at Alliance Group’s new venison processing chain at Timaru’s Smithfield site later in the season.
Meanwhile, deer farmers are eyeing Europe, as exporters organise their chilled venison contracts for the European game season, according to a Fairfax news report. Venison prices are said to have “so far maintained a level of stability reflected in the meat schedule prices deer producers were being paid.”
New Zealand beef was amongst a ‘greymarket’ consignment of smuggled goods on a container ship seized by Chinese authorities after attempts were made to smuggle it into China. The frozen meat cargo worth US$10 million also contained other beef, chicken wings and pork from the US, Brazil and Australia. One Australian industry commentator has estimated the smuggled meat trade from Hong Kong, Schenzen and Vietnam accounts for 500,000 tonnes each year. Lower tariff rates for New Zealand meat, as a result of the free trade deal with China will make this trade less profitable for smugglers. However, concerns are for food safety of the smuggled perishable products as the cold chain may not be managed efficiently.
Click on any of the links to read more about each item.
Animal welfare initiatives
A number of animal welfare initiatives, including newly updated guidelines for animal transport within New Zealand, a review of the Animal Welfare Act 1999, development of a new national strategy, plus distribution of a revised toolkit for farmers are underway.
A newly updated Transport within New Zealand Code of Animal Welfare was issued by the National Animal Welfare Advisory Committee (NAWAC) in 2011, alongside a review of the code for Meat Chickens and a new Goats code, according to the Committee’s newly released 2011 annual report.
The Transport Code covers all animals transported by land, sea or air within New Zealand. It provides clarity about who is responsible for the welfare of animals at all stages of transportation and gives direction about how this must be achieved.
Committee chairman John Hellstrom, says the Code has been rapidly adopted by industry since its launch in September. “It is gratifying to see this code, like the earlier dairy, sheep and beef and pig codes being widely adopted within industry guideline.”
Other activities for the year covered in the annual report included developing advice for the Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) and the Minister on aspects of the proposed revision of the Animal Welfare Act 1999. Among the issues considered were the future roles of the committee, the effectiveness of Codes of Welfare and alternatives, the welfare of wildlife and methods for increasing the transparency of NAWAC’s process and activities.
NAWAC is an independent advisory committee to the Minister for Primary Industries. It was established under the Animal Welfare Act 1999 to provide advice to Ministers on matters relating to the welfare of animals in New Zealand and to develop codes of welfare.
A copy of the new Code can be downloaded from MPI’s website, where a hard copy can also be ordered.
New national strategy
Alongside the review of the Act, MPI is also currently working on the development of a national strategy for animal welfare, which will set the future direction of animal welfare in New Zealand and outline the Government’s key priorities over the next few years, according to MPI’s newsletter Welfare Pulse. Input has been obtained from key stakeholders like vets, animal industries, animal advocacy groups and users of animals in research and teaching.
The final strategy and legislative proposals will be presented to the Minister for Primary Industries in late 2012 or early 2013. It is intended that an amendment Bill be introduced to the House during the first half of next year.
Revision of Animal Welfare Toolkit
This activity adds to the newly re-launched Animal Welfare Toolkit for farmers. This was released at the Federated Farmers conference recently and is now being distributed to farmers nationally. Beef + Lamb NZ Ltd, Deer Industry New Zealand, Federated Farmers and the New Zealand Veterinary Association were among the organisations working on the revision with MPI. A copy can be downloaded here (search ‘Animal Welfare Toolkit’).
A seat at a table
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A seat at a table
Kevin O’Grady has been looking at the role of government in the development of market-driven sustainability standards – as a participant, rather than overseer or outsider.
“If they stand over the process they will not succeed. If they stand outside the process, it’s a crying shame,” he argues.
Hickson Fed Farmers Agribusiness Person of the Year
Congratulations to Craig Hickson, managing director of Progressive Meats who last week was named the 2012 Allflex/Federated Farmers Agribusiness Person of the Year.
Five “exceptional nominations” were received by Federated Farmers, according to president Bruce Willis. Hickson was picked out from the five by judges Andrew Newman, Cr Hon Christine Fletcher and Waikato University’s Professor Jacqueline Rowarth.
“Craig is a hands-on farmer but the name of his company pretty much sums up his philosophy,” said Willis at the Auckland gala event where the award was presented to Mike Petersen, chairman of Beef + Lamb NZ Ltd in Hickson’s stead. Hickson himself was away in Australia representing the industry at LambEx 2012 and talking about questions Australian lamb producers should be asking their processors.
“[Hickson] runs a mixed 1,200 hectare sheep,deer and beef farm in Hawke’s Bay and in addition to Progressive Meats, is a member of the Meat Board. Craig is also a director of Ovation New Zealand and a number of other meat companies.”
Hickson has been an Meat Industry Association council member since 2003 and is also a Board director for Beef + Lamb NZ Ltd, Ovita Ltd, Lean Meats Ltd, Te Kuiti Meats Ltd, Progressive Leathers and Venison Packers.
An associated award, the Ravensdown/Federated Farmers Agribusiness Personality for 2012 went to agricultural scientist Dr Doug Edmeades, who was also a finalist for Agribusiness Person of the Year.
One of the things …
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“One of the things that was reinforced to me during my trip was how highly regarded New Zealand is internationally.”
New Zealand’s ‘liquid gold’
Water is also on the mind of our politicians. Water – New Zealand’s ‘liquid gold’ – is possibly New Zealand’s biggest opportunity to grow the productive part of our economy, according to the Minister for Primary Industries.
David Carter was speaking to the Federated Farmers’ annual conference last week, when he talked about New Zealand playing to its strengths.
“We can’t go past our abundance of water or New Zealand’s ‘liquid gold’.”
Despite difficult fiscal conditions, he pointed to the Government’s fronting with $35 million for the Irrigation Acceleration Fund to 50:50 fund the feasibility studies of schemes around New Zealand.
“The Government’s also committed $400 million through the Future Investment Fund to invest as a cornerstone shareholder in large water storage and irrigation schemes.
“We are making progress, particularly in Hawke’s Bay, Canterbury and Otago, but achieving consensus of all the various stakeholders means progress is slower than I would like.”
Most important aspect
In his speech, the primary sector was referred to as “the most important aspect driving our economy forward.
“The healthy performance across most of the primary sectors has enabled our economy to weather the storms of the global financial crisis and, locally, the Canterbury earthquakes,” he said, pointing to the fact that the primary sector now makes up 71 percent of New Zealand’s total merchandise export trade.
Carter referred to the EU’s “major challenges” and the “subdued” US, which in the past would have had a huge impact on New Zealand. New Zealand is fortunate to have repositioned itself so significantly with Asia, he said.
“We are well on the way to realising the Prime Minister’s ambition, which is shared by China’s leaders, to double our bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015. The government’s trade agenda, led by Tim Groser, has the potential to deliver more opportunities to primary producers and exporters.”
Talks with eight other Trans-Pacific Partnership countries, including new partners Mexico and Canada, and also Russia, India, South Korea and the Gulf States “and you sense the size of the potential prize,” he told delegates.
The Minister had just returned from Russia, with which free trade negotiations are progressing. Two-way trade is currently worth about $700 million. “But, if a deal is reached, it will be Russia’s first international trade deal and our exports will grow significantly,” he said.
Highly regarded
“One of the things that was reinforced to me during my trip was how highly regarded New Zealand is internationally. We are renowned as producers of some of the best food in the world, at a time when food security is the world’s greatest challenge.”
The Minister also referred to the importance of biosecurity, local government reform, rural broadband initiatives and a new animal welfare toolkit for farmers being launched by the Ministry for Primary Industries in his speech.
Two weeks to Red Meat Sector Conference
Aside
Two weeks to go to the Red Meat Sector Conference, which will be held on 16 July In Queenstown. Click here for the latest programme
Watching water stewardship
With current consumer trends and international focus on the environmental there is an ever-growing range of requirements facing business and local government. These can focus on tangible things like water and carbon as well as less tangible things like corporate and social responsibility and sustainability, writes sustainability consultant Kevin O’Grady.
In the case of water, there is a worldwide recognition that this will be the next area in which standards will be developed. The development of world standards for water stewardship is likely to form in two ways, concurrently:
- As Government policy leading to legislation which must be followed. This legislation may be influenced by bi-lateral or multi-lateral issues in the same way as the development of carbon emission reduction has been influenced by the Kyoto protocol. As the carbon experience shows, dealing with global issues through domestic legislation is fraught with difficulty.
- As market-driven standards that are widely accepted by environmental and social stakeholders and promoted water stewardship to consumers via the retailer and other trade ‘gatekeepers’. These standards are typically not constrained by regulatory minima or international trade protocols like the World Trade Organisation (WTO). The Forest Stewardship Council (FSC), the Marine Stewardship Council, Rainforest Alliance and Fair Trade are leading examples of high-end schemes. These are typically part of the ISEAL Alliance.
Currently, there is a very early draft of a new International Water Stewardship Standard developed by the Alliance for Water Stewardship (AWS) that indicates the focus of water stewardship may be on managing whole of catchment impacts.
Around the world, individual sectors and regions are pondering what an eventual standard will look like for them.
In Australia, Water Stewardship Australia (WSA) has developed a regional standard that aims to be consistent with the AWS approach, but regionally relevant. The risk of not doing so is that another region may move ahead of the game and others will have to adopt a standard not suited to their region.
For example, the European Water Partnership (EWP), although an AWS member, has a programme of developing what they call ‘sectoral tools’ which will be highly Eurocentric. They describe their aims, as follows:
- The EWP harnesses European capacity, helps to coordinate initiatives and activities in international water issues and undertakes worldwide promotion of European expertise related to water.
- The ultimate goal of the EWP is to elaborate strategies and implement concrete actions to achieve the objectives of the Water Vision for Europe.
In the case of the New Zealand meat industry, it may be of interest to note that Ingham Chickens in Australia have worked on an approach to meet the emerging standards. Also, that large retail players like Marks and Spencer are actively looking at water stewardship for their suppliers (see Hepworth N, Agol D, Von-Lehr S and O’Grady K, 2011. AWS Kenya case-study technical report: Exploring the value of water stewardship standards in Africa. Alliance for Water Stewardship, funded by Marks and Spencer and GIZ amongst others).
For more information contact Kevin O’Grady who was involved as a consultant in the Ingham’s trial but has also worked with approaches to meet the emerging standards for irrigation, cotton growing, dairy farming, flower growing (Kenya), wine growing (Chile).
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Livestock tracing scheme live
It’s happened at last. Today’s the day when New Zealand’s new National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme goes live, which will be welcome news for meat exporters.
The new National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) Act, which comes into effect today, sets out the legal framework for the collection of information on livestock, their location and movement history throughout their lifetime. It also outlines the governance arrangement and powers for the NAIT organisation.
The scheme is mandatory for cattle from 1 July 2012 and for deer on 1 March 2013.
Under the NAIT scheme, cattle and deer are tagged with an electronic NAIT-approved RFID ear tag and the NAIT database stores information about each animal’s individual RFID number, its location and the contact details of the person in charge of the animal.
Announcing the news, Primary Industries Minister David Carter says: “NAIT is an important partnership between industry and the Crown which began eight years ago in recognition of the growing need for better animal identification and tracing systems.”
The Minister is delighted that over 30,000 producers and their properties are already registered on the database, which he says is a significant step in protecting New Zealand’s farmers in the international marketplace.
“Lifetime animal traceability is an asset that New Zealand can leverage as part of its international reputation for producing food to the highest standards. It is also an opportunity for farmers to increase productivity by identifying superior animals.”
In the case of a biosecurity outbreak affecting livestock, NAIT will enable a quick and efficient response reducing the impact on the agriculture sector and the entire NZ economy.
