WORLD DAIRY SUMMIT
PSA FIGHTBACK
Food safety top priority for China’s largest dairy player. PAGES 10-11
G3 thrives against odds at Golf Course Orchard. PAGE 12
RURALNEWS TO ALL FARMERS, FOR ALL FARMERS
NOVEMBER 5, 2013: ISSUE 549
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Direct line to top SU DES H KISSU N
A MOVE to get Fonterra director John Monaghan onto meat cooperative Alliance’s board as an independent looks set to create further conflict within the company, if not the industry. Chairman of Alliance, Murray Taggart, told Rural News Monaghan’s background doesn’t appear to fit the criteria the board are looking for in an independent to replace Owen Poole. “It’s difficult to see how he would fit the slot we are looking to fill,” Taggart said. While not wanting to question Monaghan’s ability, Taggart explained Alliance needs diversity at its board table and already has strong representation from farming and dairying. “We want someone with experience of international markets, preferably in food, and someone who’s been a chief executive at some point in their career…. Ideally that would be in a highly competitive industry - we consider the meat industry to be quite competitive – a duopoly or monopoly background doesn’t have a lot of appeal.” Current independents Graham Milne, who is chairman of Synlait Milk, and John Waller, a Fonterra director, already, bring considerable dairy insight to the Alliance table, he adds.
B+L urged to ‘get off the fence’ and support MIE’s push to restructure the meat industry.
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FONTERRA STAFF unhappy with food and safety standards in the supply chain can now take their concerns directly to the top – without the fear of being victimised. Launched 12 weeks ago, the internal food safety and quality hotline number has been given to the co-op’s global staff, says chief executive Theo Spierings. Staff can air their concerns directly with the group director food safety and quality, a newly created position reporting to Spierings. He told the World Dairy Summit, in Yokohama, Japan last week, that Fonterra has copied its existing whistleblowing model for food safety after an operational review of the WPC80 scare. “It showed that when people have concerns about food safety they don’t have sufficient access to higher levels,” he says. “So we really copied our model of whistleblowing and there should be open lines for all our staff around the world to take concerns directly to the top.” Spierings later told Rural News that Ian Palliser has been acting in the new position and a substantive appointment will be made soon. Asked if such a whistleblowing model-type policy could have prevented the WPC80 incident, Spierings said it’s hard to say. “If someone at Hautapu had raised concerns about production procedures, we would have intervened. This
never happened.” Spierings, on his first visit to a World Dairy Summit, organised annually by the International Dairy Federation, devoted the first part of his speech to the WPC80 scare. He showed the 2000 delegates the near-capsize photo of Emirates Team New Zealand’s boat. “If it had crashed, it would have been game over for Team NZ; the same nearly happened to Fonterra on August 1,” he says. Spierings recalled that he was in Europe on August 1 when he got a call. “My people in New Zealand said we have an issue – botulism. I said that’s almost impossible. I know from 30 years in dairy that it’s almost impossible to find botulism. But the report really said it was botulism, it produces toxins and mice are dying – that was the message.” Getting a second opinion would
have taken a month, he adds. “And if one child or one consumer was affected during that time, that for me personally is unforgiveable but for the business we would have had to close the shop.”
Spierings says the product recall was the right decision but admits some things could have been handled better. “You always learn from such events.” – More pages 6-7
NEW CROP, NEW MACHINE Alan Newton shows off a few spears from his first commercial asparagus harvest, three years after planting a paddock with crowns on his South Canterbury farm. Full story page 8
*Dry matter cost calculations takes into consideration the costs of product, delivery, labour, fuel, spreading and spraying. For more information please visit www.donaghys.com