National Poultry Newspaper

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NATIONAL
Vol 1. No. 7 July 2018 National Poultry Newspaper PO Box 387 Cleveland 4163 Phone (07) 3286 1833 Fax (07) 3821 2637 Email ben@poultrynews.com.au
Ongoing commitment to animal welfare
At the Chook Chat Shack were Gemma Wyburn, Sam Munro, Tamsyn Crowley, Georgie Townsend, Jojo Jackson, Kylie Hewson and Ashley Radburn.
Busy month preparing for second half of 2018
POULTRY Hub Aus- tralia has been busy over the past month preparing for many events in the second half of the year, includ- ing this year’s Ideas Exchange.
Registrations are now open for Ideas Exchange 2018, which will be held in Brisbane in late Sep- tember.
The theme this year will be ‘Building Ca- pacity’.
We encourage indus- try representatives and farmers to get involved.
We have a few speaker sessions yet to fill, so feel free to contact us if you have something to share.
PHA was recently awarded $100,000 as part of the Youth Em- ployment Innovation Challenge.
The Innovation Chal- lenge aims to develop projects that investigate, design and implement better ways of helping young people aged 15- 24 find work.
Our challenge will be attracting young people to the poultry industry to help with our capac- ity shortage and ageing workforce.
If you are interested in getting involved or to give feedback on your business capacity chal- lenges, drop us a line at poultryhub@une.edu.au
Last month PHA at- tended PIX/AMC 2018 in sunny Broadbeach, Gold Coast Australia.
The conference pro- gram featured three days filled with the latest in innovation and informa- tion, with knowledge- able industry personnel from both Australia and overseas attending.
Over 200 booths lined the trade exhibition ar- ea, making it one of the industry’s largest and most extensive trade displays.
One of the highlights of the trade display this
year was our very own ‘Chook Chat Shack’ (try saying that five times fast), a joint initiative between PHA, Austral- ian Eggs and AgriFu- tures.
Dr Kylie Hewson, who was instrumental in the concept of this space, said, “I really enjoyed being in the space we’d created collectively between the poultry RD&E organisations.”
“It was so great to have lots of people, industry and researchers coming into the Shack to meet, learn and discuss poul- try RD&E.
“It’s through this type of engagement that great RD&E outcomes are achieved for the poultry industries.
“I look forward to cre- ating the space again at the next PIX and mak- ing it even better.”
The space was unique when compared to other displays as we created an area with couches to sit and relax, small meeting spaces and a wide array of informa- tion about all the fan- tastic initiatives and research that all three organisations undertake.
Jojo Jackson from Australian Eggs noted the Shack was great be- cause it provided a cen- tralised meeting place to catch up with familiar egg industry faces and also to meet new ones and foster new connec- tions.
In addition to a meet- ing place, we also used the space to showcase the great research being supported by our organ- isations.
Following our Data Visualisation Workshop held earlier in the year, we asked researchers to design posters that would encompass what they had learnt at the workshop and attract a wide audience to learn
☛ continued P2
by TAMSYN CROWLEY Director
IN recent months I have been consistently com- municating with politi- cians, our members and the community to high- light the egg industry’s open and transparent ap- proach to the way we farm and our ongoing commitment to meeting the community’s expec- tations on animal wel- fare.
We have backed up this commitment by opening our farms to the commu- nity so they can see for themselves what modern egg farming really looks like.
As farmers, we all know quality produce comes from healthy animals, therefore maintaining the health and welfare of our hens forms the foundation of what we do.
Ensuring the community understands this has been central to our message, reinforced by the fact that our industry will not toler- ate those farmers who do the wrong thing.
Following the close of the poultry standards and guidelines public submis- sion period, Egg Farmers of Australia demonstrated our members’ commit- ment to animal welfare with the release of our animal welfare policy.
This policy is the first of its kind and proves to the community we are com- mitted to making sure every bird on every farm is looked after according to our high standards of animal health and wel- fare.
This policy also demon-
strates to those who wish to discredit our industry that we have, and will al- ways look after our flocks to stringent animal health and welfare standards.
At EFA we continue to be busy demonstrating the worth of our industry’s contribution to society, and we are communicat- ing to politicians and de- cision-makers the folly of making a decision out of this process that will harm our industry.
We feed Australian families with the cheap- est source of protein and this animal welfare policy proves to our support- ers, our opponents and all those in between that animal welfare is of pri- mary concern to us as an industry and that we are listening to the concerns of our community.
Of import to note from the policy is our commit- ment to interpreting and practising the newest and best aspects of modern science.
Current debate in ani- mal welfare is dominated by emotional claims with little fact, and at EFA we are working hard to re-
verse that trend.
Our policy also outlines
our commitment to com- munity education and we are doing this through a program of farm tours for any person with an inter- est in learning more about how we farm.
Most importantly, we support the implementa- tion of nationally enforce- able standards of welfare.
No other livestock in- dustry we are aware of has welcomed mandatory standards, but we know our members need cer- tainty to move forward.
Differing guidelines and regulations in each state and territory, not to men- tion the uncertainty creat- ed by the current process is no longer acceptable.
EFA is working hard to end this uncertainty and on that basis we will continue to push for the best outcome for both our members and their birds.
If you want to learn more about EFA’s animal welfare policy or get a copy, please feel free to email EFA’s policy ad- visor Angela Griffin at angela@eggfarmersaus tralia.org
by JOHN DUNN CEO
See Pages 13-15 for PIX/AMC highlights ☛ L.B.WHITEHEATERS
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