Contents

AVEC – OUR ASSOCIATION Who are our members ? EU Key partners avec, a member of the International Poultry Council AVEC FOCUS Guarantee of a safe product Chicken welfare: from the farm…to the slaughterhouse Feed costs affecting the poultry market Labelling at stake Turkey sector, regaining market by communication toward consumers SINCE LAST YEAR – THE YEAR 2006-2007 IN BRIEF PROSPECTS FOR POULTRY MARKETS IN THE EU 2007 - 2014 GLOBAL VIEW ON WORLD MARKET 2007 STATISTICS TABLE EU25 IMPORTS OF TARIFF LINES 02 AND 16 MATRIX BOARD MEMBERS AND DEPUTY BOARD MEMBERS ADDRESSES AVEC MEMBERS

So far, 2007 has been a challenging year for the European poultry industry. Trying to recover from 2005 and 2006 Avian Influenza crisis consequences, the industry had to deal with a various range of issues… A few member states were hit by some AI crisis in beginning of 2007 with the effect that the European industry has had no rest in his fight against Avian Influenza since last year.The market has been affected but the different European and national authorities reacted so promptly that the virus did not spread and the disease has been each time decimated. Poultry market has been touched mainly because of the fear of AI among the consumers and recovered slowly from previous years’ crisis due to high production costs related to high feed and energy cost.

Globally nowdays the market is good and avec will continue to defend and promote the interests of the European poultry sector. This year avec had the great pleasure to welcome a new member: GIZ mesne industrije representing the Slovenian poultry industry, and in order to defend even better the industry the secretariat has been moved from Copenhagen to Brussels and strengthened its working forces with the arrival of Estelle Gallot in January 2007, assisting the secretary general and the director.

Working then even more closely with the different European institutions, avec has been really involved in some legislative outcomes such as the new Council Directive laying down minimum rules for the protection of chickens kept for meat production and the implementating regulation of the Tariff Rate Quota agreement with Brazil and Thailand. As well avec took part in a lot of consultations, evalutions or reviews on different issues (hygiene legislations, protection of animals at slaughter, animal by products, marketing standards for poultrymeat, etc.) and kept a scrupulious eye on the never ending negotiations of the WTO Doha round and all on going bilateral negotiations.

It’s also in, when appropriate, arming its position in working with other European organisations which are in line with the European poultry industry ideas’, that avec won through some issues like microbiological criteria, the development of a community guide in order to fight Salmonella and Campylobacter or a common position on additives for use in animal nutrition.

Convinced that the poultry industry is stronger when united across continents, avec continued to contribute to the international level playing field network: the International Poultry Council which became reality in October 2005 and since then got more and more importance as regards to the others international organisations.Together with the poultry stakeholders worldwide, avec can fight problems which do not respect borders, like for example Avian Influenza or the impact of policies for the development of bio-ethanol.

It is thus with a great confidence that we trust avec for successfully facing the future challenges of the European poultry industry and continue to speak with one voice thanks to the very broad representation by the European industry in avec and to the very good and constructive cooperation that the organisation has with its members who are the heart of avec.

Further Reading

Take a closer look at the avec 2007 Annual Report (PDF 27 Pages) by clicking here.