Moy Park recognized in corporate responsibility awards

Moy Park, one of Europe's largest poultry producers, has won the Rural Action Award and UK Big Tick for its responsible business practices at Business in the Community's Responsible Business Awards 2011.
Moy Park was awarded the Big Tick and the Rural Action Award for its efforts in developing youth employment in rural areas and helping rural communities maintain a sustainable economy.
Brian Moreland, Moy Park corporate responsibility manager, commented: "We are delighted to have received a Responsible Business Award and UK Big Tick for our achievements in corporate responsibility. Moy Park will now go forward to the national stage of the award as one of four finalists in the Rural Action category. As a business, we are committed to acting responsibly and believe it is crucial to support young people who have an interest in working in the agri-food sector."
Business in the Community's Responsible Business Awards are the UK's longest-running corporate responsibility awards.

Trade agreements could help US remain world’s largest pork exporter

Already the world’s leading exporter of pork, the United States can further improve its export opportunities through a pair of multi-national trade partnerships.
The Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership provides a great opportunity for the United States to increase trade with its closest competitor of pork exports. The partnership involves the United States and 27 member nations of the European Union, also a global leader in pork exports and pork consumption.
In 2012, the United States surpassed the EU as the world’s largest exporter of pork, with $6.3 billion in sales, said Becca Hendricks, assistant vice president of international marketing for the Pork Checkoff in a presentation May 5 at the World Pork Expo. The U.S. also shipped pork to more than 115 countries in 2012, and exports accounted for 27 percent of all U.S. pork and pork product sales, she added.
If the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership talks are successful for the U.S., its leading position should be solidified. Currently, only 0.25 percent of the pork consumed in the EU is from the U.S.
“This is one of the largest pork consuming regions, so the opportunity is tremendous,” said Laurie Hueneke, director of international trade policy, sanitary and technical issues for the National Pork Producers Council.
Countries in the European Union have imposed trade barriers that have hindered the United States. Among those are bans on ractopamine, trichinae mitigation requirements and prohibition on pathogen reduction treatments. However, Hueneke is confident EU nations will realize U.S. pork is safe and some of those barriers can be lifted.
“There are a lot of issues that we have on the table. We view the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership as an opportunity to engage, remove these barriers to trade, and export more U.S. pork to countries that consume a significant amount of pork,” she said.
Negotiations within the Trans-Atlantic Partnership are expected to begin in early July.
Export opportunities appear to be growing for the U.S., as the number of nations in the Trans-Pacific Partnership is also growing. What was a four-member partnership in 2006 has 10 members in 2013, with Japan soon to become the 11^th.
Member nations – the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore and Vietnam – have agreed Japan’s admission is a good thing, but the formal approval process remains to be completed.
The United States pork industry has been subjected to high tariffs from some Trans-Pacific Partnership nations. Hueneke is hopeful tariffs will be less of a hindrance after trade talks commence.
“The exciting part of this agreement is we can reduce the tariffs on U.S. pork and pork products. We’re already the lowest-cost producer in the world, and this just improves our competitiveness in these markets,” she said.
Hueneke also hopes some of the sanitary or phytosanitary barriers will be lifted as a result of trade talks. Specific examples Hueneke mentioned include trichinae regulations imposed by Chile, and porcine reproductive and respritatory syndrome restrictions placed by Australia and New Zealand. Most of those barriers have little scientific merit, she said, but are based more on protecting the nations’ own domestic production.
“The Trans-Pacific Partnership provides leverage for the U.S. to negotiate and remove these barriers and move more products into these countries,” she said.
The Obama administration originally expected an agreement to be reached by the end of 2013. Because of the recent move to include Japan into the partnership, that deadline might not be met.

USDA raises broiler, egg production forecasts

The forecasts for broiler and egg production in the United States have been raised in June, according to the United States Department of Agriculture's World Agricultural Supply and Demand Estimates report, released on June 12.
Broiler forecast
The USDA forecast for broiler production in 2013 was raised from the 37.34 billion pounds projected in May to a 37.36 billion pound estimate in June. A slight increase in slaughter is expected, based off of hatchery data. The agency's projections for 2014 production remained steady at 38.4 billion pounds.
The USDA's projection for 2013 broiler exports increased from the 7.26 billion pounds projected in May to a 7.36 billion pound estimate in June.
Egg forecast
The forecast for egg production was raised from the May estimates, reflecting slightly higher table egg production in the third quarter. U.S. egg production for 2013 was estimated at 7,879 million dozen in the June report, compared to the 7,864 million forecast in May. The projections for 2014 production were unchanged at 8,051 million dozen.
The agency also raised its forecast for egg exports, projecting 2013 exports at 287.2 million dozen, compared to its May estimate of 273.2 million dozen. The export forecast for 2014 did not change in June, with the estimate at 287 million dozen.
Turkey forecast
The USDA's 2013 turkey production forecast saw no change in June, with an estimate of 5.88 billion pounds. The 2014 production forecast also stayed steady at 6.2 billion pounds.
The U.S. turkey export forecast for 2013 was raised in June to 783 million pounds from the 713 million pounds forecast in May.

BPEX releases 2013 Yearbook detailing pig research

The new-look 2013 BPEX Yearbook details all the pig research being carried out by both BPEX Knowledge Transfer and Research and Development is now available online.
The publication covers all the research projects including those under the innovation fund scheme, and there is a section which takes a look at the industry in figures. These cover everything from performance trends over five years and cost of production data to carcase weights and average back fat measurements
"This publication replaces the old Annual Technical Report but it contains so much more," says Miriam Drewett, technology coordinator at BPEX. "The publication outlines all the work currently underway by BPEX aimed at helping pig producers both cope with volatile cost of production and move towards the 2-ton sow target.
The report is available on the BPEX website and can be downloaded in sections at http://www.bpex.org.uk/articles/302959/The_BPEX_Yearbook_2012__2013.aspx.

China to become the global consumer of pig meat

China is expected to become the world's leading consumer of pork on a per capita basis, surpassing the European Union by 2022, according to Focus on China - OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2013-2022 report.
From 2001 to 2012, China's agricultural trade (imports and exports) increased from $ 27.9 billion to $155.7 billion. Import dependence doubled from 6.2 percent to 12.9 percent with China's net trade deficit in agriculture and food standing at $31 billion in 2012.
It is projected that China's consumption growth will slightly outpace its production growth by some 0.3 percent similar to the trend of the previous decade. As a result, a further but modest opening of China's agricultural sector is anticipated although these prospects vary by commodity.
The government has instituted a policy to prevent any further exit of land from agriculture while the 12th Five-Year Plan sets specific targets for area and production of wheat, rice, coarse grain, soybeans and tubers. This Outlook affirms indicates that these targets should be met or exceeded in the next decade
China's imports of oilseeds are expected to rise by 40 percent over the 2013-22 period, accounting for 59% of global trade. Sugar imports should stay above the tariff rate quota level over the projection period.
China should maintain its leading role in global fisheries as its aquaculture as production continues to increase at half the rate of the previous decade. China is expected to account for 63 percent of global aquaculture production in 2022 and remain one of the world's leading fish exporters.

Feeding pigs human food waste poses disease risks

Feeding pigs recycled human food must be done under strictly-controlled conditions, otherwise a producer risks deadly pig diseases, such as foot-and-mouth, classical swine fever and African swine fever, according to the National Pig Association.
These highly infectious diseases, which can be introduced in infected meat - even meat that has been processed and cooked - are economically damaging to a producer and the only effective way to control them is by widespread slaughter of livestock.
NPA's warning comes as "Pig Idea" environmental campaigners call for more left-over foods to be fed to pigs as swill. While recognizing that feeding pigs properly-treated and rigorously-tested foods such as unsold bread and vegetables can deliver significant environmental benefits, NPA warns that there is always a risk of regulatory breakdown, as happened in the 2001 national foot-and-mouth outbreak, when infected swill was fed to pigs on a Northumberland unit in the UK.
"We don't want this campaign to give the public the mistaken impression that it is alright to feed waste food to pigs," says Dr. Zoe Davies, general manager of the National Pig Association.
Feeding waste food from catering establishments including home kitchens and restaurants - even if it is only vegetables - has been banned in the UK since the 2001 national foot-and-mouth outbreak, which devastated countryside tourism and livestock farming and  more than 6 million farm animals to be compulsorily slaughtered.
The law also covers food waste from other premises, including food factories and distribution warehouses that contains or has been in contact with animal by-products such as raw eggs, meat and fish products. None of these items may be fed to pigs, including pigs kept as pets.
"We appreciate that the Pig Idea campaigners have the best of intentions and have been at pains to explain all the legal issues but we remain concerned that promoting the image of pigs eating waste food is unhelpful," says Davies. "The pig industry already uses more than 1 ton per year of by-product from food manufacturing, but only as part of a tightly-regulated and audited process."

China grain needs to grow through 2014

China's grain requirement for feeding to farm livestock and aquaculture between October 2013 and September 2014 is set to grow by another 1.6 percent after an increase of nearly 2 percent in the current crop marketing year, according to information presented to the latest annual conference of the International Grains Council.
Xiaohui Wang, chief of market monitoring for the National Grain and Oilseeds Information Center (CNGOIC) in Beijing, told the meeting that 159.26 metric tons of feed grains have been used in China in 2012-2013 and usage in 2013-2014 is likely to rise to 161.75 million metric tons.
The 124 million metric tons of maize used in Chinese feeds in 2012-2013 compared with just 83 million metric tons in marketing year 2003-2004, said Wang. Over those 10 years, while corn use grew at a rate of 4.6 percent per year, expansion in China's livestock and poultry sector prompted national feed production and consumption to grow by 9 percent annually.
The progression for feed in 2013 was slowed during the early months of the year by an outbreak of H7N9 avian influenza that caused illness and deaths among people who had contact with live poultry. Although sales of chickens and eggs fell in certain parts of the country and this affected the demand for poultry feeds, Wang told the meeting that the situation was recovering and would be unlikely to impact strongly on annual feed figures
The conference also heard a forecast from International Grains Council analysts that China may need to import as much as 7 million metric tons of maize in the 12 months to June 2014, compared with 4 million metric tons in 2012-2013. Wang's presentation included a CNGOIC view that China's annual corn imports between October 2012 and September 2013 will have amounted to 2.7 million metric tons, but the amount could almost double to 5 million metric tons in the next marketing year as the demand for use in feed and food rises faster than domestic production.