Conference round-up

First up, thanks to all of the hundred-plus people that attended the recent ‘New Zealanders Passionate about Pork’ conference in Christchurch. There was certainly excellent interaction with the speakers who provided high quality information.

For those of you who missed out I’ll take the opportunity to provide some of the key messages that came from our speakers.

Zuza Scherer talked about Generation Y. The reason why we got Zuza to speak is that this group of consumers is a major opportunity for the pork industry and in fact a mandatory group to get consuming more pork as they are 25% of the population and their consumption patterns for life are being set. Here are some characteristics to dwell on: Read more

Hamish Sutherland (General Manager, Mainland Poultry) talked about the egg industry and how it had delivered to consumers’ welfare concerns – essentially by the industry agreeing to a code of labeling which provided clarity around production systems and gave consumers the ability to make their choice. Read more

Terry O’Connor (Executive Manager, Viterra New Zealand) gave an overview of world grain and proteins situation and about Viterra’s involvement in NZ. Of note is that Viterra has invested $80 million in the NZ feed industry over the last two years. Key points about grain were: Read more

Rob van Barneveld introduced the bid for the next Pork Cooperative Research Centre for the period of 2011-2019. NZPork has been a core partner in the CRC since its inception in 2005. The issues being faced by the Australian industry are not dissimilar to our own: welfare, and the interactions between politics, consumers, supermarkets and obviously farmers. Product labelling is also a significant issue spanning pork production systems, Country of Origin labelling and equivalence of imported production standards. Read more

Tony Alexander (Chief Economist, BNZ) gave a wide-ranging address on the economy, the recession and prospects. Read more

Finally, my thanks to the sponsors for their support:

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