Every even year the European Poultry Club (EPC) hosts its annual event at the EuroTier exhibition in Hanover in November. This year, the EPC organized in partnership with the German Poultry Association (ZDG) and the German Agricultural Society (DLG) an international event with the topic:

Animal Welfare – Europe, a continent of different speeds

Welcome and Greetings,
Gerhard Wagner, President EPC

Key note:
“The competiveness of the EU egg and poultry meat sector”.
Peter van Horne, LEI Wageningen, Netherlands (Download Speach as PDF)

“Tomorrow’s chicken – How to meet the animal welfare challenge in the Netherlands,
Ben Dellaert, PPE, Netherlands (Download Speach as PDF)

“Sustainable Intensification for Health and Wellbeing of Poultry”
Phillip Wilkinson, 2 Sisters Food Group, Great Britain (Download Speach as PDF)

“Poultry Industry in Poland”
Lukasz Dominiak, National Poultry Council, Poland (Download Speach as PDF)

The Poultry Conference finished with the International Poultry Event in the evening.

Dinner Speaker: Dr. Hajo Schumacher gave an interesting speech: “From the life of a Flexitarian”

South Africa makes great efforts to expand poultry sector
European Poultry Club members visit Cape Town to share experiences and opinions
South Africa is making enormous efforts to expand its domestic poultry sector. Members of the European Poultry Club (EPC) were able to see this by themselves on the occasion of their congress in Cape Town at the end of 2013.

EPC President Gerhard Wagner stressed in his introduction that South African poultry production possessed high economic potential and that the demand for animal protein was expected to increase by 20% over the next ten years. In order to be able to satisfy the steady rise in demand for poultry products, the South African poultry industry is pursuing a path of improved efficiency within the value chains and increased international competitiveness.

As Kevin Lovell, Chairman of the South African Poultry Association (SAPA), explained, the middle class is gradually growing, as a result of which there is a distinctly perceptible increase in demand for poultry products, especially for meat.

Bonga Mavume, CEO of Rainbow, South Africa’s leading poultry product company, attached importance to the improvement of competitiveness by establishing brands. However, he saw the competitive capacity of South African producers on their home market to be in jeopardy due to the intensive import efforts from various European countries.

Christo Joubert from the National Agricultural Marketing Council in South Africa presented a system for evaluating and improving the competitiveness of the domestic poultry sector on the basis of microeconomic, mesoeconomic and macroeconomic indicators. These include, for example, consumer preferences at the macroeconomic level, biosecurity management at the mesoeconomic level and the price and availability of feed at the farm level.

In a further contribution, Loutjie Dunn, Member of the Board of the Animal Feed Manufacturers Association, provided an overview of South Africa’s feed industry. Accounting for approx. 60% of the costs, feed represents a major component in the success of a competitive production chain. As regards the quality and nature of feedstuffs, he stated that discussions in South Africa were very similar, for example, to those in Europe. For instance topics such as salmonella, mycotoxin and dioxin as well as GMO were becoming increasingly important in South Africa.

Javier Ramirez, MD Lohmann Tierzucht, provided an overview of the European layer market and it’s challenges.

EPC Board Member Dr. Lothar Hövelmann stressed in his conclusion that the exchange of information between producers from Europe and South Africa was essential for better understanding of the political and economic frameworks and the production and marketing conditions of the different regions. The representatives from South Africa had demonstrated impressively that enormous efforts were being made to meet the growing demand in the country through improved efficiency of value chains in the poultry sector and thus also enhanced international competitiveness.

The exchange of opinions and experience was complemented by visits to leading South African poultry meat and egg producers and to slaughtering and processing plants.

The Panel  Discussion finished with the International Poultry Event in the evening.
Kevin Lovell, Ceo of the Southern African poultry association, gives a very interesting overview to production, trade and business opportunities in South Africa and in Africa as a whole.