Lets talk meat with Norman Bagley.

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the three Pronged podcast. We're now in series two and going from strength to strength. And tonight we also have a very special guest that many of you will know in the meat industry, Mister Norman Bagley. But first, we'll start off with our usual intro, which is the good, bad and the ugly of our week. So, boys, who is going to take the good this week? [00:00:30] Speaker B: I'll take the good. My good is that hog Rose season is in. Is in full swing and we've got our biggest, biggest event yet this coming weekend in London. It's a back to back sort of festivals or festival two, Saturday and Sunday. The logistics of coming back to the farm to pick up a pig and wash a machine are going to be interesting. But yeah, I'm excited to do this one. Nervous, but excited as well. [00:01:02] Speaker C: Cool. [00:01:04] Speaker D: What's so fast? [00:01:06] Speaker A: What are the major. What are the major sort of issues with hog roasting? Is it a hard thing to get into? [00:01:16] Speaker B: I think. Well, the biggest bit, if you're not a pig farmer, is sourcing decent pigs. But we've got pigs, so that's quite handy. I'd say the biggest issue, especially if you're doing a public event, is judging, is judging the number of people you're going to be serving. So a lot of ours are private. So you get told the number beforehand. We get paid two weeks before the event. So that's what when you do a public one, people, you might take a whole pig, you serve 50 people and then you go all that leftover. Then also the challenges of keeping the pig because ideally with EHR, after 2 hours, you don't really want to be having the meat just there. So it's to try to time it and have doing it at peak time where people come, queue up, you serve and you're gone. So, um, yeah, it'd be interesting. [00:02:10] Speaker D: Well, I'll take the bad. [00:02:12] Speaker A: And I think there's all. Well, being an Englishman, I think there's only one way, one place to go with this. Obviously. Last weekend, yet again, we fell agonisingly short. Got to the final despite playing some of the worst football in the entire tournament. But anyways, we got there. But yeah, just to be disappointed once again, it was a really tough night. I'm unfortunate enough to have a lot of scottish friends and I really dished it out when they went home very early. So it really came back to bite me. So, yeah, I was tail between my legs for a few days as well. [00:03:00] Speaker C: Yeah, it was. You're right, they did play crap and they lost to a better team. So they didn't feel overly gutted, to be honest. Here's one of those. So I'm taking the ugly. I don't know if you can call it really ugly, but there's always been a bit of a slang and a bit of a thing around them BMW drivers. The BMW drivers were always classed to be the people that were, you know, don't have indicators. What I've learned in the last month or two, they've been replaced by Tesla drivers. These people who drive Teslas, I do not know. I'm going to go and get a Tesla and then I'm going to bore you. I'm going to drive it like a BMW and the next thing I'll do, I'm going to bore you about how many kilowatts a mile it does. It's charging rate. Let's talk about charging stations. I mean, who would go and buy the Tesla and just shout about it? Because unless you got given one, you just keep your mouth shut. [00:04:00] Speaker A: You're just jealous, Neil. [00:04:01] Speaker C: You're not jealous. I guys ran the free liter v six. I ain't ever driving an electric car. [00:04:11] Speaker D: Yeah, waivers. He has a pass. You there? So much of his electric car that he let me drive him up in my diesel to Turnberry. [00:04:25] Speaker C: They didn't have a socket there or something like that to plug it in. [00:04:31] Speaker D: I was called in who might sort of listen to old fashioned diesel thing. [00:04:39] Speaker A: Actually I said I might pass, Neil, but I probably don't get past Norman the way he drives, to be honest. [00:04:47] Speaker C: Oh, happy days. [00:04:48] Speaker A: So enough of the Tesla banter. So yeah, as we said, we're honored tonight to have a very special guest in Norman Bagley. So Norman will be very well known to many of you in the meat industry that, listen, he's a former auctioneer, an avid tweeter, and most recently he's founder and head of policy of Ames, which is the association of independent meat supplier. And as he mentioned, an avid golfer, and I must say, a complete bandit. So welcome, Norman. And yeah, tell us a little bit more about yourself. [00:05:37] Speaker D: Yeah, so I was an auctioneer until foot and mouth in 2001. Latterly, for the last 20 years I've been ripping in North Yorkshire. We had about 70 wholesaling avatar customers in Ripon. It was a really successful farmer owned market and for the last few years of it I got very interested in the regulatory controls which were increasing on abattoirs and along came foot and mouth. So the auction map was closed. But before that I'd been on a. A task force on meat inspection charges, which are Colin McLean, who you might remember, used to be CEO at MLC in those days. And this task force was very influential in the end because we won the principle of a headache charge system of charge of the inspection, and it saved the industry a lot of money. And it actually to the fact that about 50% of the total throughput in meat plants, in red meat plants, went through medium and smaller abattoirs, which obviously hadn't been the political message of the previous 1015 years, which the smaller medium sized guys didn't add up to much. So I set up the organization on the 21 February 2001, which is literally the night before foot and mouth. So I ended up with 50 operators in those days, smaller operators. We set the organization up and the next day foot and mouth broke, and so we were right in the front of it. And foot and mouth did us a real favor in terms of the organization, because over the ensuing six or eight months, twelve months, the medium smaller plants where the keys are getting stuff dead, because a lot of the big plants were closed because they were the wrong side of control areas and all that sort of other stuff. So by the end of foot and mouth, we ended up with 80 members, and now we've got about 300 members in total, which amounts to about 130 or 40, 50 avatars, 100 processing plants, coaching butchers, and then 50 service providers. And all of the added value members, we've moved very much from just a small and medium sized to embracing the big ones as well. We're in white meat. We look after about two thirds of the poultry industry, as well as red meat. And essentially the reason that membership of her organization is attractive. We have a really fantastic technical and legal team. I've got five vets that work for me, two of which are ex chief vets of the FSA. I've got one who's a farmer and a barrister, as well as being a vet, and two other guys that were connected into the FSA. And a lot of people wonder why you need that sort of team. But the meat industry is the most highly regulated industry in the UK. Relative to risk. It's total nonsense, but that's how it is. And if you're supplying a major retailer, the biggest risk you've got as a processor is that there's a animal welfare expose or one of the farms that you buy off or whatever, and the retailer will of course, be in the firing line there, and the reputational risk is extremely high. So what we do is we get in the way of all that stuff because you've got animal activists that are illegal entering plants and all. So all of that crisis management has to be coordinated and done in a very, very sensible, pragmatic way. And no other organization has that sort of team. Most of them thought that, well, they've all got technical teams, haven't they? It doesn't really matter. But technical teams are one thing, dealing with welfare, expose activist interventions and all these sorts of things. That's what we do. We deal with all the rest of regulatory requirements, we deal with the politics we do with everything. But principally it's looking after meat plants with regard to issues on the ground. Your day to day operations. Running a meat plant is a highly complex operation and you need that support. So we're there pretty well as a one stop shop for running a meat plant. That's how it runs. [00:10:36] Speaker C: Sounds good. [00:10:39] Speaker D: Does that give you a flavour? [00:10:41] Speaker C: It does. So you're very much dealing with almost like not the farmer part, but the looking after, what happens when the animal leaves the farm and the sort of food manufacturer almost like the food, the manufacturing part of it. Am I correct in saying that? [00:10:57] Speaker D: Yes. Yeah. So obviously the farmer customer base is vital to the. To the well being of the processing industry. You haven't got farmers, you haven't reprocessing. So managing the relationship between the farmers and the processors, that's very much a commercial operation, but we try to help encourage good working practices between the two on that. So we engage a lot with AHDB and the other levee boards that farmers rely on to represent their interests in marketing and exports and etcetera. Yes, you're right. Essentially, we're looking after the meat process. [00:11:49] Speaker B: With regards to the welfare side. Norman, I remember sitting in a meeting with red tractor regarding welfare in pigs, and it's quite clear, I find when the welfare talk is working, at least at farm level, and probably a little bit at abattoir level, it gets to a point where cost comes in. And for me, as a farmer, I always think that if we care so much about animals welfare, then to a point we shouldn't be putting cost ahead of the animals welfare. And my sticking point for me is like the use of gas, like CO2 for stunning for pigs. And I think like there has been talk of potentially using inert gases or mixing in inert gases to make it probably a bit more, less stressful for the animal. But then you hear the talk of, oh, it's going to cost too much or it's not going to be as quick if we use electric or electric is not as accurate. But do you think there's going to be a time where there will be that push from within the industry rather than from outside, ie, activists and having XYZ videos put out of pigs, holding their breath or whatever? Do you think you'll ever be a time when the industry will think, actually having. Using CO2 probably isn't the best gas to use and let's invest a little bit and use, whether it's in, like, argon or whatever other gas we're going to use. Because if for me, if it meant that I paid an extra ten p or whatever for the animal to be killed with a gas that's better than CO2, I think I would do it, yeah. I don't know what your thoughts are on that. [00:13:45] Speaker D: So gas stunning, from a welfare point of view, is quite a contentious area. There's arguments, you know, there's arguments for and against, which I get the traditional way of slaughtering has its critics as well, obviously, with the electrical stunning. But a lot of the large operators have gone to gas stunning, as you know. And it's not just efficiency, you know, as far as they're concerned. The science backs up what they're doing. But it's a bit like non stunning, isn't it? The whole science of cut to death at times as well. So the issue of stunning, per se, non stunning gas, is just such a fluid area of discussion. You've got the religious elements of it, not obviously in pigs, but you've got the religious element of slaughter as well. So the whole area around methods of slaughter is highly debated, highly contentious, difficult politically. So in pure terms of the. Whether the current system of gas stunning is the best, I think I'm probably with you in that. Technology being what it is, it's not unlikely in the near future that a different form of gas stunning comes forward. By the way, we can do it better than this. [00:15:38] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:15:39] Speaker D: So I don't think. I don't think the authorities, because of the international use of it, are likely to turn around and bang a stunning because they can rely on various veterinary assessments and all this sort of other stuff, that the behavior of the pig through the gastonic is a sort of neurological sort of reaction to gas. And so I suppose you can almost relate it to the guys that are condemned to death by gas and all that sort of stuff. In human terms, it's still highly contentious, particularly in America, of different ways. They euthanize people that have been censored. All these other so my guess is that the authorities are unlikely to head off in that area of Falun gas spilling. I think they're more likely to, and this is a personal view, they're more likely to see how, you know, the whole thing develops over the coming years. So in terms of welfare, I don't think the welfare argument against gas tying has actually fattened too much purchase, if you like, with the authorities. That sort of. Is that a fair assessment in your eyes? [00:17:20] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I agree with that. But I think, like whenever, especially with the authorities, or both processors and farmers are on some of these boards, I think when people talk about welfare, it needs to be, we either really care about the animal or we don't, because we can't care halfway. [00:17:48] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah. [00:17:50] Speaker B: Like, my view on the non stunt slaughter is, even if I had beef animals, or we've got goats and sheep, I wouldn't sell my animals anywhere that they're not getting stuck. Because my argument is this, being brought up religious. I understand the religious side, but I don't understand how as a species, as humans, we can look after an animal for two years if it's a cow, Orlando, six months for a sheep or goat or whatever, and you can't spend 10 seconds to kill it in a way that it doesn't put it through pain. I don't know. I don't know how we can do that. [00:18:29] Speaker D: Yeah. So I've obviously got a number of vets that work for me and the veterinary profession, fundamentally against non stop. Okay? So from an organizational point of view, we represent people to comply with the law. So if the regulators want to change the law to ban non stunning, that is for them to do. We can't step into that space. [00:18:58] Speaker B: No. [00:18:59] Speaker D: And suddenly become arbitrative of how animals are stunned. So we did offer an option to, deferentially enough, five, six years ago, which was the exponential increase in non stunning has mainly been in halal. In terms of kosher slaughter, those numbers have been pretty static for the last 2030 years, but halal clearly has increased. And so with that, the demand for non stop. And the authorities, if I'm brutally honest, have never been brave enough to carry out what they want to do, which is to ban non stump. So if they're not prepared to ban it, then there are alternatives that would benefit welfare. And the obvious one is a post cut stunt. So if you take sheep, for instance, opposed to a cut electrical stunt, you know, the throat is cut and there's an immediate electrical form. So it's instant. In the case of cattle for John Stern, you would cut the throat and you would have a cap default immediately. That's it. So that the suffering would be over in a fraction of a second. And at the time, in terms of the sheep, Defra said to us, we won't do that because everybody was then non stunt. And we said, well, that's complete nonsense because the retailers won't have it. A significant proportion of the export countries won't have it. So you're talking nonsense. So you've got almost a consensus, people that think that nonstone should be banned. And we could all disagree or agree about that, but the authorities do no more than trying to limit the damage by making it more difficult and expensive to non stop. But each time they attempt that, they have the opposite effect. And the classic example was the V restrainer in chief, where they decided that they would ban the restraint, which is the best animal welfare piece of equipment that's developed in New Zealand 45 years ago. It's a fantastic piece of equipment. Wonderful because they go up there, stressless, you know, in this capacitor there, and the animal disorder at the top, and it slows the process down. And so we said to them, well, why don't you introduce this? They were post quest scum and they wouldn't do it, what they did. Instead, they banned the V restraining in the non stunt hands. So we said, well, if you do that, they're just going to go back to chasing sheet round of pens and up into races and increase the stress. And we see what they did. And we met with the officials and they just didn't understand the issue. And when our senior vet, who's a barrier trains, well, said, look, this will, your decision to ban the village trainer will actually make welfare immeasurably worse. The guy was that arrogant, said, well, that's your opinion. He wasn't even a vet. About six months later, he was invited to one of the larger stunt plants where they were still using the virus trainer. And he was taken into Lairich, and there were three of these restrainers there with sheep going up. And he looked at it and said, oh, what a marvelous machine is that. What is that? Oh, he said, it's a v restraining, which you. I joke not. And so those plans that were doing 200, 5300 an hour, which is lower rates, who had the various trainers then had to take them out, and those same plans now doing 400 now. So it had exactly the opposite effect in terms of welfare than the one we proposed. So the debate around whether it's gas stunning, non stunning post gas, stunning. It's so highly charged, trying to get a minister to put his neck out and make a decision to do one thing or the other. It's not going to happen. And don't get me wrong, just be tried and tried and tried. Interestingly, the demand for non stone, particularly in the sheep industry. When sheep went extremely expensive in the retail, they became much more accustomed to using stone. So there's been quite an increase, I think, over the last two or three years in butcher shops that used to insist on monster actually having stung. Obviously, the halal sector in beef has increased enormously into very high value premium market. So big, strong bulls, seven 8900 kilo bulls, hard bulls going into the sector, and these are animals up to, say, 500 kilos debt, which obviously would not meet any supermarkets back, and they're at the premium price. So there's almost a separate industry, reinvented over the last five, six years of strong, big weighted animals, which really were off the supermarket spec and therefore worthless. Now they're back in the premium market. So it's. [00:25:05] Speaker A: It's definitely. Yeah, it's definitely worth pointing out. I think we had AWOL home from HDB, and I think it's been that the farming industry really needs to. Really need to outline the opportunities in that halal sector. And I think a lot of sheep farmers especially, would be quite surprised at the amount that the halal sector are buying. [00:25:31] Speaker D: It's not just the domestic market. We have a strange situation where, in terms of getting export health certificates for exports, we've got a whole list of countries where we can sell cheap meat, whether it's stinged or non stunned. And if you take the Gulf states, a lot of the Gulf states take non stunt as well as non stunt. But in terms of new markets like Indonesia, Defra are now refusing to issue any more health certificates and have been since George Eustace was there, to any more halal markets. So we said to them, well, why don't you issue the health certificates for animals that have been stunned to countries where we know, like Indonesia and these other cross states that do accept stunned animals? No, we're not going to do it. So we're wasting a huge. We take to Indonesia. I think you guys know better than me, 120 million citizens live there, mainly halal. And a lot of that market will accept stunt, but we can't access it because Jeffrey will give us health centers. All things crackers. [00:26:56] Speaker A: Yeah, I think government support is a. Yeah, is. And hopefully now with the. With the new government, hopefully things change and we get more support. One thing I definitely wanted to touch on was, and one thing we've discussed on a previous episode of the Poddies, and a big issue for farmers and processors is these third party audits, and really the plethora of them that we have as farmers or as processes and extra costs in the supply chain. And yeah, really, Norman, I've seen a couple of articles you've done sort of summarizing this and your thoughts from an aims point of view. I just, just ask you to sort of sum up the third party audit scheme as we have it now, and what could be the solution to take out costs for farmers and processes? [00:28:00] Speaker D: So my criticism, which has been portrayed in the press, is purely on retractor. It's nothing to do with retractor. It's to do with third party audit per se, which quite frankly doesn't do what it says on the tin. It doesn't protect the retailers from animal welfare exposes. And there are quite a number of retailers that have lost confidence in red tractors, as an example audit. So they've turned to their own audits. So you've got red tractor, then you've got some of the ones that have their own on farm audits as well, etcetera, even set up their own platforms, like Morrison's did with authenticate. And so the latest argument over the environmental element that protractor were wanting to impose was just the end of a long line of dissatisfaction. And more and more third party audit streams were getting involved. I mean, some of these large processes could have 6810, twelve audits a week, and they're all tick in the same boxes. And the great thing about third party audit is that if you look at all the food scandals for the last 1015 years, they've missed everyone. Not one of them. All of them. So if you take the Lascaux Foods scandal, Thomas Rowe, local authority, missed it. Truth. Sanders missed it. BRC, missed it. Red tractor, missed it. Fine. So for all the costs that those bodies enforce upon the industry, what was the industry getting back? What was the retailer getting back? What was the consumer getting back? What was the farmer getting back? I'd say bugger all. Nothing. So I go back to what a guy called Bill Joliet said, who was the head of this whole thing in New Zealand. New Zealand depend 95% on exports, so they have to comply with the requirements of every international market to trade. And Bill is a wonderful guy. He was speaking at the World Food Congress in Tokyo in 2019, and he'd be sat there. There'd be 250 representatives of the biggest, you know, multinational audit companies. This, who were totally immersed in third party audit. And his statement was most interesting. He said, look, he said, third party audit is nothing more than a money making scam that should be confined to the dustbins of history. What you require is a competent authority audit with suitable penalties, etc, etcetera. So it was a damning assessment by the one nation in the world that pretty well can only exist on exports. So we've had no solution over here on this side of the water, because the idea of farm default has been talked about for 25 years, but it's never been delivered in actual measurable stuff that people can relate to. You know, you get rent tractor, you get all these other ones, you know, RSPCA assured and they have their inspection, but it doesn't deliver true traceability, it doesn't deliver the found to fork ethos, it delivers a mishmash of audit individuals who've got variable competence and everything else that goes with it. So what's changed over the last 18 months is the launch of the Armour Health and Pathway review on farm. And if you remember what Bill Jolly said, what you require is a strong, competent authority audit. So here's the story. The animal health and Pathway review is Defra funded. The vet, when he does that, pathway review on farm, is working for and paid for by Defra. So that element of the review morphs into a competent authority audit, which in world trade terms is worth 103rd party audits. And when I put it to the New Zealanders, this is the path we're off down to. They said, we can only aspire to that. So my question was, when was the last time you heard the New Zealanders on the Aussies saying they would aspire to something that we're doing here in England? [00:32:45] Speaker A: Oh, definitely. [00:32:50] Speaker D: The World Food Integrity Conference last November, which Chris Elliott ran in London. And that's what set forward the whole debate about how we embrace this and use it. If farmers are having a competent authority ordered on their farm, paid for by Defra, why wouldn't you use it? What is the logic of not using that wonderful piece of work? So if you put together that with livestock information for real time movement data, which we've got in sheep, and we're having cattle in the next twelve months or so, and we can introduce pigs, we can introduce any species that then keeps the CVO happy in the case of a disease outbreak, foot and mouth, she knows different to 2001, she would then know where the bloody hell the livestock's been and where it is, there is your basic assurance that's it. So what we did when we started to launch our ideas on this was we did a gap analysis on a full red tractor audit. Chris has seen this and we included all of the functions of the audits on the right hand side. We divided those up between what would be covered by the animal Health and Pathway review. Then our vets transferred over a rake of other stuff like medicines and whatever you want, that the vet could then stay on farm for an extra couple of hours at the expense of the farmer to validate another great big chunk of a corent tractor review. Or the. Or the RSPCA would do. Although, say, that may cost the Farm 150 quid. That is a fraction of what it would cost for his red tractor orders, which is 6700 quid. So you shift that stuff over and this, by the way, will all be on an app, which a farmer just has the app. All the stuff goes in there. Everybody has access. You give access to your. You know, you process a customer and there's all the information, it's all in one place. So the left. On the right hand side could all be done electronically, remotely, the lot. So all of it. [00:35:23] Speaker A: Am I right in thinking your own vet can do this? Your own farm vet? [00:35:26] Speaker D: Yeah. Because your own farm vet is doing the password review, which. Yeah. So he's paid for by definitely to do that. Yeah, to do that bit. He's working for. For Daphro and he's therefore got the responsibility under his rcvs, you know, duties, to do what is right and therefore he stays. He then stays on at the farmer's expense to do the other stuff and then all the rest we do electronically, the whole damn lot. So all of a sudden, you get everything that they essentially, the retailers require through retractor and through RSPCA, all over and all done, all dealt with. So once you've put that block together, the beauty of it is the retailers and the processors can pick and mix because there's a lot of stuff in retractor at the minute that quite a lot of retailers wouldn't be interested in. So they don't have to have it. So you as a farmer, can give your customer just exactly what he wants. And, for instance, if they turn around and say, right, we want to, on the same app, we want your carbon measurements and all this sort of other stuff, which is going to sit elsewhere, we make it accessible through the app, the whole thing. [00:36:53] Speaker A: Yeah, well, I do think. I do think those. A lot of those stone sort of red tractor supporters. And I think there is some good parts of red tractor. And I think it's worked well in the poultry meat industry. But I think, look, just if there's things to be improved, especially, and in other third party hoards, we've got to look at them, because. [00:37:17] Speaker D: We all know. [00:37:17] Speaker A: That farming is a tough job and the margins are tighten. And with something like this, I think if we can remove cost from it, then it's a positive thing. Flavneal, what do you think? [00:37:35] Speaker C: My little thought about it was. I think it sounds a brilliant idea. I think it's really good. But again, I think it just comes back to farmers really hate having all their information out there on the sort of general show, don't they? They like to keep things themselves. It's a bit of an issue, isn't it? Sharing information. We were talking before we went on air and recording this myself and Chris and Flav, about, you know, farmers being open about profitability and how they run their farms. And farms are not. They're a real closed book and they like keeping this information themselves. If you get everything on an app where anybody and everybody could just access that information and all of a sudden you cut everything out, it'd be a no brainer. But it. But I think. I think the issue we've got is actually not the issue of having everyone a nap. I think. I don't think that's the issue. I think it's probably farmers and getting them used to the idea and not realizing that big brother's watching them. [00:38:31] Speaker D: So let me knock that head on ahead. Straight away, the issue of whether your animal health and fast food review was successful will be a matter of public record. So that. So the database in DaFRA will be in public, and it will say that Chris Dickinson had his bathroom review on certain subjects. And that's that. Yeah. So if there is a case of enforcement on that holding. So I'll give you an example. The DeFRA have introduced a very sensible, risk based, proportionate approach to enforcement. So initially, the vet would say to you, there's five or six things here that need to be dealt with over the next three months period. And if that period goes by and it hasn't been done, then you move to the next stage, etc. Etcetera. So over a twelve months period, it would become obvious of whether the farmer was going to comply with what the vet required under DAFRA instructions. So there's three or four. There's three or four moves before what I would call prosecution for welfare or whatever. So that process itself wouldn't be public. The only time anything would be public is if Chris Dickinson had his review taken away from him. But everybody would know that in any case, because there'd be a prosecution in court that Mister Dickinson on this, et cetera, et cetera. I mean, so essentially you'd lose your license to farm. So the actual pathway review itself is a marvelous opportunity to farmers to say, I've had my pathway review. Yeah, there was half a dozen things it needed doing. I shall see to those over the next three months. [00:40:45] Speaker A: Yes. [00:40:46] Speaker D: So let's take it to the end point at risk, where there's an animal welfare exposing to a farmer that has, through a processor, supplied Tesco's as to changery, whoever. At that point, the vet that did the initial review would go back to the farm to establish the facts, etc, etcetera. So the retailer would be able to say, well, the vet's going back there, the guy's either been struck off or he's been prosecuted, or this, that and the other, or the improvements being put in place, et cetera. So you've got a very simple automatic system of monitoring what's going on, because if there is that catastrophic incident which some activist is taking, the vet goes to the facts nine times out of ten. If the vet goes back there on the evidence of some activist, nine times out of ten will be a load of rubbish. But you would have a simple process. Now, the other advantage of the system we're advocating is that for the last 1015 years, they talked about lifetime assurance. [00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:03] Speaker D: Okay. Has it been delivered? No. This delivers it overnight because you've got the animal movement, you've got the pathway. So if you're somebody got 500 dairy cows and you've got 300 male calves to sell, and the other farm that's had the pathway review, you sell them to a variety of farms who've also had the pathway review, you might then sell them to a finisher that's also had a pathway review. There's your lifetime assurance it gets better. Half of the sheep flock in the UK is not assured because they don't need it, because they've got exports. They go hell out. The retailers only use less than 20% of UK to do sheep meats. 80% goes elsewhere. So. Yep. So at a stroke, the other 50% of farms become assured overnight. Lifetime assures. So in one stroke, you do what everybody else has failed to do in the last 1015 years and at minimal cost to the producer. But here's the best thing. If you look at the average cost of, say, a red tractor audit, is it 600, 650 quid a farm? Yeah. So if you take off the extra 150 quid, we're saying for the vet to stay on for a couple of hours to do the extra stuff, let's say there's 450 quid, you've got 16,000 farms, you've got seven and a quarter million quid saved. The average cost of the large processors of the whole third party audit function, that they've got to do with a large process. You're talking of a minimum of two and a half to 3 million a year. And that is to manage the whole assurance system, all the audits. All. Yeah. [00:44:09] Speaker A: Flav, I've just been. Just to get your thoughts on it as a farmer, and obviously with your processing background, what would you think for this as an alternative? [00:44:22] Speaker B: I think it sounds good. And I think, like the point Neil makes, that farmers, or as farmers who don't like to share, I say we. I share probably overshare sometimes about what the fat. What happens on farms and mistakes, or sorts like I've shared when a sows killed ten piglets on online and it ended up creating a good conversation. You're obviously going to get people that don't like it, but it shows people what actually happens behind the scenes. And I think something like having like a pathway thing that you say, how Norman says it's going to be like. Like a public thing and it's out there, let's say like something like companies house, you can type in and type in Neil's farm, on Chris's farm, you can see how the audit went or whatever, I think one that would show the public how the openness farmers have. Because if we're saying as farmers, black british farmers, and yet we won't allow you on the farm unless we've had a little sweep up and made it all nice for you to see, why the hell should I back you if I don't trust you? Yeah, I think we'd also have less expose if everything is out there clean, for example, our farm here, what's someone coming to explore is when they see it all on TikTok and Instagram all the time. To me as a farmer, yes, we're all human. No, like, you can't walk into anyone's house and say you're not going to find a cobweb in a corner or a bit of dust somewhere, or like a dog hair on, I don't know, on a kitchen counter or whatever. It's like we're all human. But there are things that would be unacceptable, like if you were to turn up and there's an animal with a gaping wound with maggots coming out of it. That's not all this has just happened, that's neglect. So there are things that all, as farmers as a whole, we'd all say actually that's wrong. And good farmers shouldn't be tarnished by the same brush, by having a few people that for whatever reason don't have best practices. So I think definitely I'll be on board on the openness of, as a consumer as well, we all consumers, I'd want to be confident in that. I'm buying goats from Chris and I know that if I was to walk on that farm when Chris is not there, I'm not going to find a goat that got his foot caught on a barrier three days ago and he's still there bleeding like there's no legs, lost circulation and all sorts. And any farmer that's negating that, well, let's have a discussion. Why? What have you got to hide? Because if all farms were. Open door policy, yes, I know we've got issues with crime. Like we've got a friend in Cambria that constantly has people breaking in and stuff, but if farms had the open door policy, you can turn up at a gate and a farmer shows you around. I don't think people would have any reason to expose. There's nothing to expose because it's there to be seen. So that. Yeah, that's, that's my view on that. [00:47:25] Speaker D: Yeah, I would just finish with the. We're looking here. If you look at just farms and processes, you're looking at a cost saving for the industry, 50 to 60 million, that is without cost of compliance units within the retailers themselves. Yeah, my guess is that we're talking a 60 or 80 million taken out of cost to the, to the chain. So the question then is there would be some concern that the retailers would walk off for that and the farmers wouldn't get any benefit. Well, the answer is you then all you need to do is just say, look, how much. If you said to AHDB as an example, right here's 50 or 60 million to invest back into the levy business, what would you do with it? All of a sudden you save that sort of money. You've got a pot of money to help in areas which ASDB and others haven't been able to do because they didn't have the money. That 15 60 million is just a burning down the tubes for what it doesn't do what it says on the tin. And that's what we need to get away from. We need to. We need to embrace technology and everything else we can do with this stuff. I mean, for instance, if you take the BRC element, which we haven't talked about, we've looked at the BRC and we're not going to fall out of BRCA about this. It's a matter between the retailers and BRC. But everything that BRC do can be done electronically. It doesn't need site visits. All they need to have is access to the data. And then if they see something trending wrong, they just send an announced audit into a mech to find out what's going on. Every other industry does this. They, you know, BRC could do a huge streamlining of what they're doing. And so the only people that are going to be chased off about this initially are the third party audit companies. And quite frankly, I couldn't do the monkeys. [00:49:32] Speaker A: Ever know. I think one other question I think we've chatted about on the. On the pod before is just. And I know me and Flav have both been affected by this is the amount of closures of small abattoirs. Obviously, as farmers, we constantly go to different events and we're told to diversify, and a lot of farmers look to start their own brand, whether it's sheeps or pigs or goats or beef or whatever. And obviously, small abattoirs are a great way of local, being able to supply local food. We've obviously seen quite a lot of these clothes. I just wondered what you sort of thought were the main reasons for this. And is there anything. What could be done to negate this? [00:50:26] Speaker D: It's a complex story. It is true. Over the last five or six years, we've probably lost 30 or 35 arbitrage in totality. Quite a lot of those advertisers are shut still in business. Not the avatars. They shut the avatar, and they could have converted the avatar into a shop, they could have inverted a cutting operation and they could then get their stuff contracts laundered down their own. So the numerical number is quite misleading. The other thing which is misleading is that if you take the microabatas from 14 years ago, when they took away the 20 units, in those days, you could do 20 units a week, catalyns equivalent, but you had to use the square stand so you couldn't export. So FSA took that, took that restriction off quite sensibly. So what that then meant was abattoirs, which had just been doing 20 units on one day a week. They could do two days a week, three days a week, as much as they want relative to the chilling capacity they have. And so what you've seen is you have seen a number of plants numerically drop, but they've been sucked up by what were microabitas expanding into contract slaughter and doing miles more than what they used to. So the number. So if you listen to the protagonists around it, they say that because the number of arbitrary, that means there's less livestock going through small avatars, it isn't true. The number of livestock numerically going through the remaining clutch of small avatars which are provided the contract sorting has gone through the roof. So I can go straight to one example down in the southwest where they built a small abattoir because of the restriction it was doing. It was doing 20 units a week. That abattoir now is doing 120 units a week. All contract slaughter doesn't sell an ounce of meat. It's got a cutting operation. It's got a packing operation. So Fabio or Chris or anybody else living in that area can go in there, have an animal sorted, have it chilled over two, three weeks, have it cut up, have it packaged in their own, you know, in their own name, whatever it is, all they then need is a half a ton chilliwack, and they've got a meat business and they haven't done anything. [00:52:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:52:55] Speaker D: So, yes, there are one or two areas of England in particular, where in an ideal world, there would be another small amount of time, but there's a reason they're not there, because they weren't commercial, they wouldn't use them, or they just want to use the big boys, which is, you know, which is fine. I understand all that. So. But we've mapped it and so deferent, and this is why they. They have come up with a couple of initiatives now, which is support more avatar. You know, we feel it was far better to support the expansion and the services of the existing small avatar group. You know, you know, ones around the country, make them do more, help them to a war, help them into exports, whatever you like, because the history of building new avatars, especially ones that have been by pharmacooperatives, to say that mixed. Or I could be even more specific and say, without exception, they don't bloody well work. In fact, one of the only farmer successful farmer groups that have maintained avatars and expanded probably is farmers fresh. There aren't many that have actually done it. So, you know, Jeff had moved in our direction, but when a group of farmers come to me and tell me they want to build an abattoir, I'm quite happy to talk. Great. So what's your proposition? And if they were to stick to contract slaughter, and they can demonstrate that they've got enough capacity to do that for the people that are slaughtering, to then take the carcasses way and sell to the zoo, whatever they want to do, or they got their own cutting plan, that's fine. But nine times out of ten, they say, oh, we're going to get into meat wholesaling. Well, at that point, you know, they're knackered, you know, they take themselves into a completely different territory, which is highly competitive, highly specialized, price conscious and everything else. So, you know, when farmers want to make an appetite, they will restrict it to cutting and packing. For commercial customers that have their own meat businesses, that's great. But if they're going to get in there and get into meat wholesaling, you've only got to look at the abattoir up on the Orc and all these other places, is disaster. So for me, the support that Defra have launched, and there's a second wave to come, probably won't build that many new avatars. If you built a handful, that'd be brilliant. But it will probably much more directed to supporting new Justin, once expanding this successful operation. I mean, Chris, you're not far from you in the Lake district. Yeah, you know, Aries, another one, not far from it. Aries was a small one with a great little business. Yeah, put your shop and a micro avatar. So they shut the shop, turned that into a bigger shop, build a new small avatar in the existing building. They have do the marvelous job the exports have to Hong Kong, everybody week, for God's sake, just to show what can be done in those small businesses. But he's never got into what I call, you know, competitive retail, you know, competitive wholesaling. It's specialist markets. And that works. Well. [00:56:22] Speaker A: I could see you have an abattoir flav. Definitely. [00:56:28] Speaker B: Me opening an abattoir. [00:56:29] Speaker A: Yeah, I could just see it now. [00:56:31] Speaker B: Well, I would, but I don't think I've got the time into my day. [00:56:39] Speaker A: If you want something, don't ask a busy mandeh what I say. [00:56:42] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:56:44] Speaker D: Yeah. So in terms of opening an abattoir. [00:56:49] Speaker C: Norman, before we go talking about opening an avatar and this question, sort of just question things in, is, what are the big opportunities for the UK meat sector? Because that ties in quite nicely with opening an avatar and stuff like that. So what are the opportunities, you know, for the meat sector going forward, really, what do. What do we need to do? [00:57:13] Speaker D: So, in Covid changed everything with regard to sales, direct sales of the consumer. So I got 100 coaching butcher members and the night that Covid broke, they're all shut down. Hospitality shut everything. For them to survive, they had to change their business model, so they changed to selling direct to consumer, whether it was online, whether whatever. And I'll give you one example of one down in Leafy, Gloucestershire. And their customer base was high class restaurants, high class hotels, etcetera. Usual risk, two months credit people earned. Thus disappeared. Proper branding, longhorn branding, superbike quality stuff. And when hospitality was shut down, they said, what the hell are you doing? Get this up a website, get on social media, wherever, and sell direct to consumer. Home delivery hold down. In nine months, they changed their business model around to selling 100% direct to the consumer, every ounce of which was paid for it before it left factory, every Amazon. So instead of having a half million pound overdraft, you have half a million in the bank. [00:58:33] Speaker C: Big difference in there. [00:58:34] Speaker D: Huge. So a lot of that proposition of selling direct to the consumer has survived and prospered, even the larger operators, even the big catering budgets that got into it. So one of the biggest members of ours, they had about 5600 staff. They laid off three or 400, they had 200 left. And they did pop up shops, they did every mortal thing just to keep the whole cashflow going. And they. They've obviously gone back into, you know, the weatherspoons and all those sorts of contracts, etcetera, which are price conscious, but they've kept on to that other business. So domestic, I think selling high value product to consumer is good. So the question is, can that allow that level of business to use the same story in exports or Costigan? You know, no question the expansion of halal, if the government will allow markets that are desperate for our product, is there. Australia, as you know, just banned live exports. They used to live export to the Gulf states, so the Gulf states are going to have to get used to accepting carcasses from that part of the world. So there's huge opportunity for us there. I can see the australian industry turning around and moving to for those Gulf states that want one non stone slaughter, because obviously when they went to the Gulf states, they would be non stone slaughter. So I can see the Australians, they're either going to have to allow their plants or they do already to expand their non stance load, or the Gulf states will have to accept sun. A lot of those Gulf states will. So I think we can expand over there. Let's put Australia in a more awkward position and where it's been. And if you look at the welfare some of the journey times to those big australian ships with about 20,000 sheep on, it looks a bit of a challenge to say, at the very least. And again, in beef, you know, it's still the niche, you know, the farmers that access these processes that are developing these high value markets. You know, Covid did the other world of good and you know, do farmers need to become semi processors themselves? Not necessarily if they want to. The facility is there to facilitate that. So halal is expanding, especially in beef exports to new markets, 110%. That Defra will open up a country like Indonesia. And that's for stone. The pork sector is a bit more interesting, you know, as Fabio will know. It's more domestically controlled by the large processor who incidentally probably own 40% of the production prime for production on farm anyway. Might even be more. But is there a greater opportunity to facilitate premiumization of pork? Of course there is. It's a story, you know, it's Flavio's story about his. That's what he. That's what he sells on. It's a story about how what he does with his life, pigs and his products. Can that be expanded? Of course it can, yeah. And at this moment in time, there's enough slaughter capacity to facilitate any of that. It might not be. It's interesting when we mapped it all out, there's nowhere in the country who can't get to an abattoir within 2 hours. Now the fluffy people would turn around and say, well that's too long. But it's tough because that's deference criteria. If it's within 2 hours, it fits definition of being welfare friendly or welfare compliant, call it what you like. So as long as that's the case, you can see why Defra haven't put a vast amount of money into building new avatars. Because they fear there'd be money down the drain and most probably around. Whereas supporting the existing network and expanding that is much more realistic. [01:03:22] Speaker B: I think it's interesting with hearing the two hour sort of limit that Defra have. Because today I spoke to some people that came on the farm about the whole net zero. And what I think net zero is, and I think we have policy makers that give, have all these targets and come out with all this nonsense about achieving certain things like on our farm. Again as an example, fairly small compared to some of the big operations is that we source. I'd say in a russian, 90% of our raw materials come from 3 miles away. We do everything we can on the farm. I don't have a tractor, so I use my truck to do most of the stuff or just walk around and do it. But then when it comes to slaughter of the animal, all the bits that I've saved on carbon and emissions and not using Sawyer goes under drain because I've got to drive to Chippenham to go the albatross back once a week. [01:04:28] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:04:28] Speaker B: So it's one of those things where they're hoping for a and they're achieving j. The two things don't add up at all. [01:04:38] Speaker D: I think. I think I. It's not a two just to correct. It's not a two hour limit. It's their view. The journeys within 2 hours fit their idea of welfare friendly, if that's the best way to put it. Because obviously you can't have a two hour limit because otherwise the stuff from northern Scotland will never get slaughtered. When it's 12 hours away. You've got the current transport times during which if it's longer, they have to, you know, stop and rest. And this, that and the other. The two hour definition, if you like, is something which they consider fits their. Not the legal requirement that there's a criteria about being acceptable. That's the best way to put it. They think that traveling 2 hours in terms of local production is a perfectly acceptable thing. And there's virtually nowhere within the country you can't get to another. You might not be able to get to the avatar that you want, but then you're into commercial stuff, then, you know, it gets over complex. No, that's great. [01:05:49] Speaker A: Well, yeah, that sort of brings, it brings us to a close on this episode, but yeah, I think it was, it was great. Thank you, Norman, for sharing that with us. And I look forward to hearing about Ames vision for third party audits. And I think as all farmers and processes would agree, if we can take some cost out of the supply chain, it would be great. I think. Yeah, it's great to have someone like your norman, with your knowledge and passion for the industry. And if we've got people, you at the helm, then it's. I think the industry is in a. In a. In a good, safe place. So thank you for joining us. And, yeah, that's it for tonight, but we will be back in the coming weeks. We've got some. Some of a very exciting guests. So on behalf of myself, Flav and Neil, thank you everybody, for listening. [01:06:54] Speaker D: Thank you. [01:06:55] Speaker C: Cheers, Norman, thank you for your time. [01:06:56] Speaker D: Thank you, Norman. Thanks, bye. [01:07:00] Speaker A: Right, and that brings to end another episode of the free Prong podcast and yeah, a very informative episode. I think we'll all agree on a key issue, which I think is going to be very topical for farmers and processors going forward. Yeah. Some of the numbers Norman mentioned that we could save in the supply chain I think would really grab people's attention. So, yeah, it's definitely going to be one to watch and monitor over the next few months about where it goes. Like you said, if that's what New Zealand are aiming for, it's very, very rare UK farmers that we're ahead of them. So let's hope we can be and let's hope things can improve for the better. [01:07:56] Speaker C: Definitely, definitely. I was just struck by the man's knowledge. I always amazed when we get these people on it and they just spew out these facts and figures. And his passion for it is really clear to have that much knowledge just there. Like you say, you know, I think UK agriculture just needs to be a lot more open. It comes down to the whole thing about being open, doesn't it? Because if we had all the stuff there available, it would save a lot of time and effort and hassle and stress as well, because no one enjoys doing a red tractor audit. And if we can take some of that out of it, that's going to reduce a huge amount of stress in farmers lives. [01:08:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I think. I think that as much as a lot of farmers are fairly like quite dimension of assurance schemes always raises people's. [01:08:47] Speaker D: Is it heckles or hackles? [01:08:49] Speaker B: Whichever one it is. I think the system Norman was talking about there, it would definitely, definitely be more attractive than unattractive. And I think for me the biggest thing I picked up on is that transparency. Like we all, like I said earlier, we always talk about back british farming, but we need to give reason. People give people reason to back british farming, not just because we are local, because that's not enough. [01:09:19] Speaker C: Yeah, 100% agree. Well, thanks again for listening. And don't forget to like and subscribe to Spotify us on Spotify and Apple iTunes. And yeah, we look forward to seeing you again in the future.