Today is: Thursday 17 May 2012 21:39:22
Broody
Get too close to a Lion and you’re likely to get eaten.
Whilst Lion has been mega successful in promoting its brand, and I applaud it, other accreditation schemes have been sat on their hands allowing them to dominate the market. The SALSA scheme for example. Does anyone know anything about it? One of its founders is the NFU. and like eve...
Good news for egg producers –you must be raking it in with the demand and increased prices due to the current EU shortage!! –I wish I’d been given a Pound or even a Euro for every time someone has told me that recently. Just how wrong can they be. I know packers have increased producer prices by approx 8%, but did you know the packers have...
What a difference a month makes! Februarys’ Ranger front cover had ’Egg Shortage warning ’emblazoned across it. I’m not sure if John Retson is related to Mystic Meg but his article in the same edition on page 17 relating to this scenario was spot on. Within one month the wholesale UK egg sector is in turmoil, with ap...
Its official then , Serena Cooke of Defra recently announced that all UK eggs are now fully compliant with the EU welfare of laying hens directive-the final cage producers got there at last with an embarrassing delay of over a month past the deadline. Which I understand meant that the UK wasn’t compliant with this directive on the 1st Jan...
At last the long anticipated and much discussed welfare of laying hens directive has come into being. I like many others in the egg industry feel it has been one of the most heatedly discussed topics in the press, television and regional group meetings. It is my impression though, that it has overshadowed many other important and vital issues in ou...
Postman Pat was thirty this last week, which I guess means that Jess the cat is thirty too, that’s thirty as well not ’32.’ Good old age that for a cat. Anyway Postman Pat delivered me some good news this week. Noble have cancelled their early depletion scheme and have paid me some of my money back. Roughly £3,200 per 12,000 birds...
Let’s talk about crazy. What seems crazy, irrespective of what the packers and supermarkets will tell you, is that supermarkets and packers prefer to have an oversupply. Their whole business model works on oversupply rather than shortage. And that is why producers will never again enjoy the profits we have seen in the past. Even now, when ...
It has been a terribly hard year for all egg producers in this country. Feed costs have escalated out of control. We have ’shot ourselves in the foot’ by ramping up free-range production, and the caged egg market has also caused damage by running their old cages and new enriched systems at the same time - this has caused a huge glut of...
The egg industry is a classic lesson in commercial economics, there is nothing complicated about it at all. The simple lessons of supply and demand apply together with the professional application of basic business principles. That is unless you are an egg producer in the UK, where unlike our European partners, we specialise in painting ourselv...
Most packers are recruiting again. Some are discreet and some are blatant. But recruiting they are. What message does that send out to existing producers standing in a quandary of depression and despair? We have more eggs than we need... but we may need some more. What! Run that one past me again. The hole in my pocket has been filled with the lump...
Have you ever woke up in a hot flush and continued to function as if still in a nightmare. I was wandering the house in an out of body experience. I could see myself looking at my accounts and screaming. The wife came in and I screamed again. No reason. I seem to do it every time she walks in the room nowadays. Why are my dreams melting away and wh...
How ridiculous that Freedom Foods can justify their accrediting of Dutch barn eggs by saying the UK food processing market is a market we cannot supply. He is completely out of touch. That is a market we should supply. I am sure there are lots of producers who would be more than keen to supply UK food producers with British egg. We should have the ...
Just found my 2010 copy of BFREPA’s yearbook, there was something I wanted to look at and check. -How many packers were advertising for new producers at time of print of the 2010 yearbook, who can tell me? The answer was eight, with one even guaranteeing £7,176 profit per acre with their free range egg contract. So why has it gone s...
Well it is the start of the new year, and we have just got through the coldest December since records began. I can’t say I enjoy the cold, snow and ice, but neither do the chickens; however it has proved very good for production. I have three flocks on site, my middle flock of 7,100 birds is now 46 weeks old. Before the cold spell they wer...
I wonder what happens to the feathered cast of the Happy Egg commercials when the lights go out, the money dries up and the fame fades away. They have cancelled The Bill. Last of the Summer Wine is no more. No work there, then, for these dried-up, has-been actors. There was a time when they could have picked up walk-on parts in Midsummer Murders or...
There is a point in which something you break is no longer repairable. In organic we are at that point now. The balance of supply and demand now seems to be tugging in the producers favour not because sales have started rising but so many producers have left the market to the point that packers are now ringing round for eggs and pullets to fulfil o...
Exactly who is kidding who? Are the packers starting to believe their own propaganda? They would have us believe there is too much egg about for all brands. For general free range it is certainly a fact, but only because of their ’pie in the sky’ promoting of free range. But why are all producers struggling with the recent price d...
After reading the last edition of ’The Ranger’ I had to stop to remind myself what BFREPA stood for, I thought it is an abbreviation of British Free Range Egg Producers Association, so why are we being asked to write to our MPs to support a new code for enriched caged eggs while our own industry is threatened by the huge growth in these...
I was reading an article on the BBC website that made me giggle. A German defendant was in court, the judge was having serious difficulties explaining himself so asked the court if anyone spoke German. A man in the gallery duly put up his arm and was invited down to interpret. When asked by the judge to ask the defendant his name the interpreter sa...
I am somewhat surprised that some contracted egg suppliers are complaining about the recent proposed free-range egg price decrease from their packers. My reasoning for this surprise is that egg prices are used to regulate supply and therefore an egg price decrease is a message to them to slow down or stop expanding until the market has moved more t...
It is now a month since egg crook Keith Owen was jailed for perpetrating the biggest food fraud so far detected in this country. Yet still the egg industry’s response to this enormous and blatant crime is an eerie silence. Which is as baffling as it is spooky. Because let’s be clear. There was nothing subtle or clever about the b...
Imagine a new highway law was introduced under which every motorist had to check themselves for speeding once every three months. If they report themselves as being over the limit at the moment of testing then their car will be confiscated. Completely and utterly bonkers, right? Now imagine that whether or not the motorist reported themselves g...
Free range producers ought to be deeply grateful to supermarkets. For most us, after all, it’s the giant grocers who provide the market place for our product and who pay all our bills. And it is undeniable that they have played a key role in the promotion of free range while the egg industry itself has done nothing. We should, indeed, be gra...
Before the snow finally cut him off from the world my chum Chicken Dave found himself at a social event in conversation with an extremely attractive female (well he says she was). The chat began getting distinctly flirty and Dave began thinking…well never mind what he began thinking. Then he revealed what he did for a living. An odd look came i...
When it was announced that on-farm stamping is to be adopted as part of the Lion Code it struck me as an utterly pointless and painfully costly idea. Another burden to be slung around the necks of producers who are already staggering under the weight of regulation, codification and endless inspection. But I thought I must be wrong. After all ...
News of the apparently unstoppable free range sales boom is unremitting. Free range sales to reach 2 billion eggs this year. Demand is fuelling a renaissance of the entire UK egg market. More than 40% of all egg sales are now free range. Now an MP is demanding new legislation to make it illegal for any public body to buy cage eggs. When they ...
Free range is rapidly becoming tree range. The whole image of the sector is being transformed. Where once hens picked their way through flower filled meadows there is now a chicken peering out from an entirely artificial environment where even grass struggles for light. The latest rash of afforestation is to be triggered by the decision of Freed...
Come October 5 and the nation will be in the grip of the excitement we call British Egg Week. This year the seven days in which the egg industry spends a small fortune on marketing will focus on breakfast and on the four words "Wake Up To Eggs". But as usual the egg-fest will studiously avoid any mention whatsoever of the two words "free" an...
Cage producers want to re-brand their eggs. They want the introduction of a number 4 in the categorisation system to represent eggs from enriched cages. Only they don’t want to use the term "cage" at all. They want to introduce the term "enriched colony". You may be wondering why anyone believes that it is possible to create a posit...
Producers have received a warning letter from Mr. Leigh Grant, the Chief executive of Freedom Food Limited. Its purpose is to point out that as this is summer and as hard-up families cannot afford to go abroad for their holidays this year we can expect to see more ramblers and dog walkers in the countryside. Blimey I bet you hadn’t thou...
Producers are now being issued with guidance on how to wash their hands. If you haven’t got yours yet then I can tell you that it’s a six stage process involving "right palm over back of left hand and left palm over back of right hand" and so on. It’s thorough, it’s admirably produced and it may help to keep you in busin...
The good old free range logo is coming back to life. It is now possible for members to download the is-it-an-egg-is-it-the-sun image for use on letterheads and promotional material. And membership certificates have been distributed with the logo emblazoned across the top. Which is nice. But all this activity is sure to prompt some to begin consi...
The vets and officials who will handle the next outbreak of AI have been locked in training sessions…learning to play the bongos. The drumming instruction came in a series of "away days" for 1,700 officers of the Animal Health and Welfare agency. It was, we are told, part of exercises in team building. The training cost £500,000. And if you a...
The image of eggs has never been healthier. Which is really worrying. First there was the revelation that all those dire warnings about cholesterol were just a load of nonsense. It turns out that some scientist had simply added up the wrong column of figures and all manner of agencies had issued dire warnings about the dangers of eating eggs—by ...
The organic sector is thinking of taking a holiday. It wants producers to be able to switch from organic feed to conventional without losing their organic status. This would mean that they would sell produce as non organic until the hard economic times take a turn for the better. Then they could simply change the feed order and instantly hop bac...
The nation’s biggest egg company, Noble Foods, has launched a national egg brand. It’s called the happy egg co. No that’s not a mistake. The absence of capital letters helps press home the message that the happy egg co. is a fun brand. Quirky. happy. "We’re all about fun at the happy egg co." beams the website. It even has...
Good news for egg producers –you must be raking it in with the demand and increased prices due to the current EU shortage!! –I wish I’d been given a Pound or even a Euro for every time someone has told me that recently. Just how wrong can they be. I know packers have increased producer prices by approx 8%, but did you know the packers have...
What a difference a month makes! Februarys’ Ranger front cover had ’Egg Shortage warning ’emblazoned across it. I’m not sure if John Retson is related to Mystic Meg but his article in the same edition on page 17 relating to this scenario was spot on. Within one month the wholesale UK egg sector is in turmoil, with ap...
Its official then , Serena Cooke of Defra recently announced that all UK eggs are now fully compliant with the EU welfare of laying hens directive-the final cage producers got there at last with an embarrassing delay of over a month past the deadline. Which I understand meant that the UK wasn’t compliant with this directive on the 1st Jan...
At last the long anticipated and much discussed welfare of laying hens directive has come into being. I like many others in the egg industry feel it has been one of the most heatedly discussed topics in the press, television and regional group meetings. It is my impression though, that it has overshadowed many other important and vital issues in ou...
Postman Pat was thirty this last week, which I guess means that Jess the cat is thirty too, that’s thirty as well not ’32.’ Good old age that for a cat. Anyway Postman Pat delivered me some good news this week. Noble have cancelled their early depletion scheme and have paid me some of my money back. Roughly £3,200 per 12,000 birds...
Let’s talk about crazy. What seems crazy, irrespective of what the packers and supermarkets will tell you, is that supermarkets and packers prefer to have an oversupply. Their whole business model works on oversupply rather than shortage. And that is why producers will never again enjoy the profits we have seen in the past. Even now, when ...
It has been a terribly hard year for all egg producers in this country. Feed costs have escalated out of control. We have ’shot ourselves in the foot’ by ramping up free-range production, and the caged egg market has also caused damage by running their old cages and new enriched systems at the same time - this has caused a huge glut of...
The egg industry is a classic lesson in commercial economics, there is nothing complicated about it at all. The simple lessons of supply and demand apply together with the professional application of basic business principles. That is unless you are an egg producer in the UK, where unlike our European partners, we specialise in painting ourselv...
Most packers are recruiting again. Some are discreet and some are blatant. But recruiting they are. What message does that send out to existing producers standing in a quandary of depression and despair? We have more eggs than we need... but we may need some more. What! Run that one past me again. The hole in my pocket has been filled with the lump...
Have you ever woke up in a hot flush and continued to function as if still in a nightmare. I was wandering the house in an out of body experience. I could see myself looking at my accounts and screaming. The wife came in and I screamed again. No reason. I seem to do it every time she walks in the room nowadays. Why are my dreams melting away and wh...
How ridiculous that Freedom Foods can justify their accrediting of Dutch barn eggs by saying the UK food processing market is a market we cannot supply. He is completely out of touch. That is a market we should supply. I am sure there are lots of producers who would be more than keen to supply UK food producers with British egg. We should have the ...
Just found my 2010 copy of BFREPA’s yearbook, there was something I wanted to look at and check. -How many packers were advertising for new producers at time of print of the 2010 yearbook, who can tell me? The answer was eight, with one even guaranteeing £7,176 profit per acre with their free range egg contract. So why has it gone s...
Well it is the start of the new year, and we have just got through the coldest December since records began. I can’t say I enjoy the cold, snow and ice, but neither do the chickens; however it has proved very good for production. I have three flocks on site, my middle flock of 7,100 birds is now 46 weeks old. Before the cold spell they wer...
I wonder what happens to the feathered cast of the Happy Egg commercials when the lights go out, the money dries up and the fame fades away. They have cancelled The Bill. Last of the Summer Wine is no more. No work there, then, for these dried-up, has-been actors. There was a time when they could have picked up walk-on parts in Midsummer Murders or...
There is a point in which something you break is no longer repairable. In organic we are at that point now. The balance of supply and demand now seems to be tugging in the producers favour not because sales have started rising but so many producers have left the market to the point that packers are now ringing round for eggs and pullets to fulfil o...
Exactly who is kidding who? Are the packers starting to believe their own propaganda? They would have us believe there is too much egg about for all brands. For general free range it is certainly a fact, but only because of their ’pie in the sky’ promoting of free range. But why are all producers struggling with the recent price d...
After reading the last edition of ’The Ranger’ I had to stop to remind myself what BFREPA stood for, I thought it is an abbreviation of British Free Range Egg Producers Association, so why are we being asked to write to our MPs to support a new code for enriched caged eggs while our own industry is threatened by the huge growth in these...
I was reading an article on the BBC website that made me giggle. A German defendant was in court, the judge was having serious difficulties explaining himself so asked the court if anyone spoke German. A man in the gallery duly put up his arm and was invited down to interpret. When asked by the judge to ask the defendant his name the interpreter sa...
I am somewhat surprised that some contracted egg suppliers are complaining about the recent proposed free-range egg price decrease from their packers. My reasoning for this surprise is that egg prices are used to regulate supply and therefore an egg price decrease is a message to them to slow down or stop expanding until the market has moved more t...
It is now a month since egg crook Keith Owen was jailed for perpetrating the biggest food fraud so far detected in this country. Yet still the egg industry’s response to this enormous and blatant crime is an eerie silence. Which is as baffling as it is spooky. Because let’s be clear. There was nothing subtle or clever about the b...
Imagine a new highway law was introduced under which every motorist had to check themselves for speeding once every three months. If they report themselves as being over the limit at the moment of testing then their car will be confiscated. Completely and utterly bonkers, right? Now imagine that whether or not the motorist reported themselves g...
Free range producers ought to be deeply grateful to supermarkets. For most us, after all, it’s the giant grocers who provide the market place for our product and who pay all our bills. And it is undeniable that they have played a key role in the promotion of free range while the egg industry itself has done nothing. We should, indeed, be gra...
Before the snow finally cut him off from the world my chum Chicken Dave found himself at a social event in conversation with an extremely attractive female (well he says she was). The chat began getting distinctly flirty and Dave began thinking…well never mind what he began thinking. Then he revealed what he did for a living. An odd look came i...
When it was announced that on-farm stamping is to be adopted as part of the Lion Code it struck me as an utterly pointless and painfully costly idea. Another burden to be slung around the necks of producers who are already staggering under the weight of regulation, codification and endless inspection. But I thought I must be wrong. After all ...
News of the apparently unstoppable free range sales boom is unremitting. Free range sales to reach 2 billion eggs this year. Demand is fuelling a renaissance of the entire UK egg market. More than 40% of all egg sales are now free range. Now an MP is demanding new legislation to make it illegal for any public body to buy cage eggs. When they ...
Free range is rapidly becoming tree range. The whole image of the sector is being transformed. Where once hens picked their way through flower filled meadows there is now a chicken peering out from an entirely artificial environment where even grass struggles for light. The latest rash of afforestation is to be triggered by the decision of Freed...
Come October 5 and the nation will be in the grip of the excitement we call British Egg Week. This year the seven days in which the egg industry spends a small fortune on marketing will focus on breakfast and on the four words "Wake Up To Eggs". But as usual the egg-fest will studiously avoid any mention whatsoever of the two words "free" an...
Cage producers want to re-brand their eggs. They want the introduction of a number 4 in the categorisation system to represent eggs from enriched cages. Only they don’t want to use the term "cage" at all. They want to introduce the term "enriched colony". You may be wondering why anyone believes that it is possible to create a posit...
Producers have received a warning letter from Mr. Leigh Grant, the Chief executive of Freedom Food Limited. Its purpose is to point out that as this is summer and as hard-up families cannot afford to go abroad for their holidays this year we can expect to see more ramblers and dog walkers in the countryside. Blimey I bet you hadn’t thou...
Producers are now being issued with guidance on how to wash their hands. If you haven’t got yours yet then I can tell you that it’s a six stage process involving "right palm over back of left hand and left palm over back of right hand" and so on. It’s thorough, it’s admirably produced and it may help to keep you in busin...
The good old free range logo is coming back to life. It is now possible for members to download the is-it-an-egg-is-it-the-sun image for use on letterheads and promotional material. And membership certificates have been distributed with the logo emblazoned across the top. Which is nice. But all this activity is sure to prompt some to begin consi...
The vets and officials who will handle the next outbreak of AI have been locked in training sessions…learning to play the bongos. The drumming instruction came in a series of "away days" for 1,700 officers of the Animal Health and Welfare agency. It was, we are told, part of exercises in team building. The training cost £500,000. And if you a...
The image of eggs has never been healthier. Which is really worrying. First there was the revelation that all those dire warnings about cholesterol were just a load of nonsense. It turns out that some scientist had simply added up the wrong column of figures and all manner of agencies had issued dire warnings about the dangers of eating eggs—by ...
The organic sector is thinking of taking a holiday. It wants producers to be able to switch from organic feed to conventional without losing their organic status. This would mean that they would sell produce as non organic until the hard economic times take a turn for the better. Then they could simply change the feed order and instantly hop bac...
The nation’s biggest egg company, Noble Foods, has launched a national egg brand. It’s called the happy egg co. No that’s not a mistake. The absence of capital letters helps press home the message that the happy egg co. is a fun brand. Quirky. happy. "We’re all about fun at the happy egg co." beams the website. It even has...
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