A ten-point plan aimed at revitalising the UK’s red meat supply chain was unveiled yesterday [Thursday] at a conference in London.
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The plan was drawn up by the Industry Forum for Red Meat, which was created in June 2001 to help improve the ability of the British red meat industry to satisfy consumer requirements at home and abroad. To do so, it needs to improve its competitiveness and the quality of the products it offers, and thus its profitability.
The Forum was spearheaded by the Meat and Livestock Commission (MLC), the National Farmers Union (NFU), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), and brought together experts from inside and outside the sector, as well as working closely with consumers to find out what they want the industry to provide.
In a keynote speech, Lord Larry Whitty, Minister for Food, Farming and the Waterways, confirmed that the Forum will publish a steering document before Easter, with the aim of announcing the strategy to implement the recommendations from the Curry Report in the early Autumn. Lord Whitty stressed that the relationship between government and industry must be one of collaboration – the government will not tell the industry how to farm or trade, nor is it about to make huge pots of new funding available.
However, it is keen to offer technical advice and help with information, as well as providing as yet unquantified but modest sums of money for specific projects. The government, he made clear when talking to the press on the fringes of the event, will be a sponsor, rather than a subsidiser, of red meat industry recovery as it strives to overcome the chronic structural problems weighing it down.
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By GlobalDataAsked whether some kind of import control might not be the order of the day, Lord Whitty was quite clear that this was out of the question. The imports ‘threatening’ the UK meat industry are quite legitimate trade, and the process of market liberalisation cannot be reversed – nor should it be. Indeed, Richard MacDonald, director general of the NFU, agreed quite emphatically that “the marketplace is the only solution” to the woes of the industry. Improvements will not come from subsidies but from farmers getting involved with processing and further up the chain, taking out costs and becoming more competitive in a free market.
The ten points arrived at by the forum are:
· To set up a number of best practice supply chains which actually make money
· To support the training of the next generation of managers
· To provide and interpret consumer research in a depth that hasn’t been available to the industry in the past
· To assist the processing sector with master classes based on techniques used to achieve a step change in the car industry
· To improve the basis of dead-weight price procurement for cattle and sheep
· To roll out the PROBE benchmarking technique which has been successfully pilot-tested for different sectors of the supply chain
· To apply the METRICS system for benchmarking livestock producers
· To look at the feasibility of a centre for red meat excellence
· To initiate value chain analysis in the red meat supply chain
· To introduce Efficient Consumer Response techniques down existing major retail and foodservice red meat supply chains
Please note: This is a prelude to an extended feature on the Industry Forum that will be published early next week.
i. Policy Commission on Food and Farming, led by Sir Donald Curry
