Image problems for multi-tier free-range units
A major player in the British poultry industry has warned that, while current free-range egg production systems may be perfectly legal, there is a real danger they don’t meet critical consumer perceptions.
Paul Kelly of Kelly’s Turkeys told the Scottish Egg Producers annual conference in Perth that producers needed to be willing to show customers their businesses from start to finish, but many were scared.
“The industry should be proud of its well-run broiler units, but I struggle with free-range egg units,” he admitted.
“If consumers went round a really big free-range unit I don’t think it’s what they’d have in mind. It’s an issue that might come back and bite us in the future. We need to be proud of what we do, not on the defensive all the time.”
His greatest concerns lay with the bigger free-range, multi-tier systems. “They’re fantastic, state-of-the-art systems, but they’ve been developed to suit production costs and very few birds go outside because of the size and scale involved. If someone visited the farm they wouldn’t think it was free range.
“You can do the job where the shed sides are open and the birds are all outside and in among trees and it’s genuinely free range,” he added.
Mr Kelly, whose Kelly Bronze company sells turkeys worth £8m a year in the UK, said agriculture “went wrong” in this country when it closed its doors to its customers, the consuming public.
Describing the successful growth of his own business, he said: “One of my guiding principles is that customer perception is everything. Our business is always open and ready to show people around the farm, whenever they want.”
Mr Kelly said he also welcomed the press and media to his farms and made a point of creating personal relationships with food writers and personalities. His other golden rules included being passionate about the business he was in and only ever making genuine claims for the product. And he insisted that the poultry industry needed to have a bigger marketing budget.
He said: “We should care less about shaving 1p off costs. If the industry spent more on marketing it would be in a better position today”.