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Some members have in the past enquired as to the safety of the ink used in the Egg Flex stamps, which we have supplied. That is the self-inking stamp.
Below is a Certificate from the manufacturer which you can use to assure any enquiring customer.
To whom it may concern
CERTIFICATE Ink #170
Herewith, we, confirm, that our ink for marking eggs # 170 contains the
following chemicals:
Water = H2O
E 422 = Glycerine
1,2 Propylenglycol USP = C3H802
and dyestuff:
E 124 = Vitasyn Ponceau red 4RC82
These contents are, according to the European law, allowed for marking eggs and correspond to the EU-directive # 91/155/EWG.
We hereby also certify, that this ink contains detrimental metal only in not
detectable minimum quantities.
All chemicals and dyestuffs used, are checked before production.
Furthermore every production lot is checked by our laboratory and only
released for sale after quality approvement.
This ink is made in Germany.
Bird flu
This week saw Supermarkets and Avian Influenza dominate the news.
Bird flu was there as the main story for many in the Press and TV/radio who were looking for a lead headline.
Dead swans, which were bound to captivate the public, were shown in picture form or story line.
One paragraph in The Times told that as long as you cooked your chicken meat to a temperature of 75ºC it was safe to eat. Housewives today don’t know what temperature is. They know to place it in the micro for x minutes.
I would guess that many consumers reading that could therefore assume there was an inferred risk if not cooked correctly, would take the easy way out and change to red meat. Perhaps a ready- made meat dinner made of meat possibly sourced in Brazil ?
Chicken sales EU wise are well down and some of this unsold chicken meat is being offered to UK buyers at less than half price. Sales in Italy are said to be down by 70%.
At the NFU meeting on Tuesday it was seen that the Scottish broiler producers were suffering badly. Sales were down as were margins !
This week at one Supermarket I visited they had a BOGOF on chicken breast. Scottish breast meat was on offer as a BOGOF and priced at over £9.00 per kilo.
Yet further along the aisle they had two breasts, with no BOGOF, priced at £5+ per kilo. To me that is cheating. Muriel saw Hungarian and French chicken on offer in Iceland.
Supermarkets have certainly had a bad Press this week in view of the Dowd Report which has called for a full review of the retail sector.
Concerns are that the small retailer is being squeezed out by supermarket power, and those members of SEPRA who market their eggs to that sector will know full well that their small shops are disappearing. In reply the British Retail Consortium spokesman said that there were still 1,000s of unrepentant specialist shops selling foods.
Perhaps true but the 1,000s they talk of now were many times more a few years back.
A few years back Jim Steel, who was then SEPRA Chairman, said it was all down to the Double Yellow Lines ! It was only in the High Streets where you would find them. Not in front of the Supermarket.
Back to the NFU meeting this week, much time was spent discussing bird flu and how the Press has carried the news of its spread and killing ability.
It was agreed that the egg and broiler Industry had not been as successful in putting over their side of the Flu scare. It was too fragmented and the Press have turned to any person who appeared to be an ‘authority’ on bird flu for a story.
As you will all agree some of the stuff which has been printed has been so untrue and out of context and sometimes made without knowledge of the problem.
Have the public read and realised that the virus can only be caught from direct contact with a sick bird or dried faeces? Have the Press told the public that many of the families infected in the Far East sleep with the poultry which have been infected. In one outbreak in Turkey the family had hens under the bed !
Here again it shows the Industry’s lack of co-ordinated response to Press reports.
BEIS have been putting out Press Releases but how many have appeared in the popular Press? We have to tell the Public the true story. Even if the Industry today is still guessing about bird flu and its effects ?
Fordyce Maxwell in this week's Scotsman said, "The key is communication." The RSPB is seen to even out-punch the NFU, which means the total UK farming industry ?
I found an article on the Internet about the power of advertising, which made me think, how simple.
The article asked why people in clean
green countries like New Zealand and Australia are paying good money for bottles
of water, and suggested that you have to understand the power of Image…
When a retailer buys from you they are buying both your Product and your
Image. It’s the mix of Image over Product that makes the difference.
It’s one of the reasons many of our members are retailing large eggs on trays to
many a shop at 75p per dozen.
Over the years your Image has been built and the buyer knows you, your family news and knows full well that he can guarantee your product will give his customers a satisfaction every time they crack your SCO egg.
Next door a shop may get their supplies from a Scottish wholesaler and only pay 55p.
Increasing the balance of your Image
over your SCO Product takes nothing away from the value of the Product; it just
enhances its perception.
Take water companies who have done an exceptional job of positioning one of life’s original commodities as a modern health drink. If water can be exciting and glamorous – perhaps it’s time to take a fresh look at your product. The SCO EGG ?
Who would have thought a decade or two that we would be buying water in a bottle from a shop to drink. While at home it only takes a turn of the tap.
Over the last few years your eggs have become recognized as a pure natural food just like water. The public now knows that your SCO egg is nutrition in a shell - high in food value, low in cost, and safe and delicious to eat.
Go out and sell it.
More on Bird flu.
The Minister for Agriculture Mary Coughlan in Southern Ireland has set up a top-level advisory group on avian flu - similar to a committee established during the foot and mouth crisis five years ago.
Minister also advised owners to plan now for the eventuality that compulsory housing of poultry will become necessary.
AMSTERDAM, Feb 16 (Reuters) - A unit of Dutch chemical group Akzo Nobel will supply 30 million doses of avian flu vaccines to the French government as part of plans to vaccinate ducks, the company said yesterday.
The move came as Slovenia became the latest European Union country to detect the deadly H5N1 avian flu strain in wild birds on Thursday after recent confirmation in Germany, Italy, Austria and Greece.
The French Agriculture Ministry planned to vaccinate outdoor ducks against bird flu in three western parts of the country, Intervet, Akzo's veterinary unit, said in a statement.
"The French Ministry sees these regions at risk for transmission of the influenza virus by migrating birds. The ministry has requested approval from the European Commission for these plans," Intervet said.
It will deliver the first Nobilis Influenza H5N2 vaccines in France early next week.
Transmission of H5N1 to domestic flocks could devastate the EU's €20 billion (£13.3 billion) poultry and egg industry, and many governments have ordered chickens to be kept indoors to prevent contact with wild birds. Intervet said experience has shown that vaccination protects chickens and ducks against virus transmission from infected vaccinated animals to non-vaccinated animals.
The trouble with vaccination is, I believe, the fact that it is impossible to test vaccinated birds for the normal H5N1.
HAMBURG (Reuters) - The number of birds killed in Germany by the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu has risen to at least 13, and more could follow, authorities said on Thursday.
Germany's Agriculture Ministry said that 10 additional birds had tested positive for the virus on Thursday, one day after two swans and a hawk found dead on the Baltic Sea island of Ruegen had been confirmed with H5N1.
The ministry for agriculture and the environment in the north eastern state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, where the first German cases were found on Tuesday, said that nine swans and one goose of 40 dead birds tested on Thursday were infected.
Earlier on Thursday, German Agriculture Minister Horst Seehofer said that he expected more cases of bird flu to be detected in Europe's largest economy.
"Even with the most rigorous action we cannot assume that we will overcome this matter in a few weeks," he said.
Chancellor Angela Merkel said in a television interview on Thursday evening that the government had spent months preparing for an outbreak of avian flu and was now in a position to do everything necessary to combat it.
"There's no reason for a panic reaction but I would advise people to be careful," Merkel told ZDF television.
On Wednesday, Seehofer brought forward a ban on keeping poultry out of doors to February 17, just hours after the ministry had changed the date to February 20 from March 1.
Seehofer said the ban had been imposed with immediate effect on Wednesday in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
Dennis Surgenor
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