By James Mottershead, chair, NFU Poultry Board
Like many of you, I have been watching with interest the events unfold surrounding the India, USA and EU trade deals and trade was a key focus in our recent National Poultry Board meeting. The NFU’s trade experts are still going over the finer details but so far it has looked fairly good for the poultry sector.
The key takeaway is that the UK government has listened to our concerns around welfare standards for chicken and prevented access into our domestic poultry market for India and the US, although we know the latter will continue to push for access in future talks.
The EU deal is less clear cut as it was more of an agreement to outline what a future deal might look like, rather than the finished article. So, we will be watching this closely in the coming months.
On a basic level, the commitment to negotiate an SPS agreement should remove considerable amounts of red tape and reduce costs when it comes to exporting agricultural goods to the EU. This is positive for the poultry sector which has seen a 37% decline in volume terms in exports to the EU since 2019.
The downside is that this comes at the cost of dynamic alignment, meaning we will be tied to some EU laws and future decisions with little say. For example, we will have to align with EU regulations on animal welfare in transport, which is something they are currently reviewing and may alter the requirements for temperature regulation during transportation.
As the reset marked the start of further negotiations, we have a number of questions for the government about what will be in scope of this agreement and what won’t be and will seek further clarity as talks continue.
We’ve also been busy attending various retailer engagement meetings. Key items on the agenda were the supply of poultry meat – in light of AI outbreaks abroad and UK businesses moving from 38kg/m2 to 30kg/m2 – and the development of insect and homegrown proteins such as field beans and peas.
I also enjoyed chairing the inaugural NFU Midlands Poultry Conference where we had updates on key areas of policy, developments in artificial intelligence within the poultry sector, an outlook from a retail perspective, the pros and cons of an avian influenza vaccine, and a summary of planning permission challenges for poultry enterprises. It was a really thought-provoking afternoon and as always it was great to catch up with our poultry members from the region.
And finally, a short note for those interested in the goings on at home. After spending the past three weeks thinning and clearing birds from the site, we are now empty and in that period again of seeing the site get turned around ready for the next crop of chicks. On the whole, this last crop has performed well and it’s good to finally see changes that have been made to drinker lines in order to reduce Gumboro disease starting to pay off.