The full cost recovery debate is certainly occupying a good deal of copy space again in the trade media, this time in the bi-monthly magazine Meat Management (January/February 2011). A six-page spread featuring one Food Standards Agency (FSA) spokesmen, the NFU, and four representatives from the main red and white meat trades all have their say. Covering much ground that this blog has frequently highlighted, it was all good and relevant stuff, prompting the Editor, Mr Graham Yandell, to state that in 29 years of publishing, he had never known such unity within the industry.
Blog has been encouraged by this apparent unity for many weeks and has stated thus.
But is it really true? The recent Big Debate in the Meat Trades Journal(MTJ), which we referred to last week, highlighted once again a curse to genuine unity that has always been there; that is the undertone that the English big red meat boys are, for sectoral advantage, quietly siding with the FSA, to bring about the removal of competitors within industry. Perhaps I have read this wrong, but in the Big Debate, Mr Stuart Roberts, agriculture strategy director at ABP, and a former spokesman for the British Meat Processors Association (BMPA), lets an inevitable mask slip. Despite making some useful and challenging comments towards the FSA, he reverts to type. He said: “The issue isn’t big versus small, its professional versus unprofessional. And there are, I’m sure, some unprofessional businesses in the meat sector, Tim (FSA Chief Executive Mr Tim Smith) highlighted it on Radio 4 relatively recently – there is no place for those businesses in our industry...............”
It is not for Messrs Roberts, Smith or anyone else to comment on any company’s professionalism or suitability to trade. That is down to the licensing authority on whether a company merits a license or not, and for the relevant enforcement authority to decide on whether a company is complying with its legal requirements or not. Its nobodyelse’s business. If Mr X wants to gold-plate his business for whatever commercial reason , but Mr Y doesn’t, those separate decisions are the fundamental right of both parties. It obscures the real issue, much to the delight of the FSA, and certainly puts a wedge into the lauded recent “unity.” What with Tim Smith’s “cause for concern”(see last week’s blog) and Mr Roberts’ above comments, an anti-trade alliance seems to be emerging.
But ABP pays Mr Roberts wages, not Toby Baker, so I fully respect that his stance, he hopes, will bring about an outcome that will suit his employers. No problem with that, because ultimately, we’re all in that particular boat. It is just that it is surely right to acknowledge that there is a divide, recognise it , and proceed accordingly.
It looks something like this could emerge; auctioneers, farmers, small to medium abattoirs, fresh meat wholesalers, butchers shops, livestock procurement agencies and perhaps the Scottish Meat Wholesalers could band together to form one unit, and for the English big red meat boys to fight their own corner? I’m certainly not suggesting this would be a backward step; on the contrary, by being honest in recognising where everybody stands in this debate, it could actually be progressive by bringing clarity in our confrontation with the FSA.
And we can certainly learn much from the FSA, which has strategic objectives that are perfectly clear, and which any major blue-chip company would be proud of. In a perverse sort of way, you have to admire our adversaries, and let’s not forget that is what they are. As over the years regulations have got worse, and are confirmed as being massively disproportionate, the FSA always evades any detailed discussion of what this actually means in practice. Typical quangoism (is there such a word?) from a public sector body that reckons it shouldn’t have to knuckle down like everybodyelse – naked job protectionism, pure and simple.
Mr Roberts is quite right to point out that industry has not got a clear strategy, unlike our opponents, and that is perhaps our biggest challenge. There is so much to piece together to co-ordinate and unify a concerted attack on the FSA. It will be tough. To succeed you have to try.
Toby Baker.