Farmers stir over who gets to run Meat New Zealand

By GLENYS CHRISTIAN

Over the gate

No sooner have sheep and beef farmers got the Government off their backs over producer board reform than they are again debating the respective roles of Meat New Zealand and meat companies.

At a Meat New Zealand meeting in Whangarei last week farmers were questioning if the companies should have any representation on what is still seen as the body to represent their interests, and who those representatives should be.

The chairman of Meat New Zealand, John Acland, helped the debate along by fanning farmer discontent over the cattle and deer declaration card, which must now accompany stock sent for slaughter, by saying the proliferation of different company forms was "a shambles."

Despite being an advocate of an industry board containing processor and farmer representatives, he said the situation did not function so smoothly when all were sitting round the same table.

But a rather different story is told by the chairman of Meat and Fibre Producers, Chris Lester, who says that Meat New Zealand was nowhere to be seen during the form's development and that the system is now, apart from a few glitches, working well.

He says having company representatives on Meat New Zealand is the one positive thing that has come out of producer board reform.

Brian Lynch, executive director of the Meat Industry Association, has no argument with that and says to replace meat company chief executives with chairmen, as suggested by one farmer at Whangarei, would risk a drift back to a producers' board, which was not the intent of recent legislation.

He says the declaration form is working well after initial problems and further discussions may lead to the development of a unified document.

For Hawkes Bay farmers there is the real threat that a kind of unity may be brought about in a way they would least desire.

They are waking up to the realisation that their local meat company Richmond has all but slipped from their grasp with its former chairman Sam Robinson stepping aside, and the chairman of the Primary Producers' Cooperative Society (PPCS), Jim Pringle, coming on to the board.

The South Island company now has a 17 per cent share of Richmond but Richmond's largest single shareholder, Peter Spencer, is also the biggest individual stakeholder in fellow North Island meat company Affco.

It is thought to be a question of when, rather than if the three companies are to be brought into a closer relationship, with Richmond looking likely to be the loser.

South Island shareholders are demanding return on investments north of Cook Strait and PPCS is already saying it wants to strip costs out of Richmond's operations.

The three companies have a number of linkages overseas, most importantly in lamb sales in the United States and beef into Asia, so farmers can see the commercial logic of closer ties, but still they worry about loss of competition, and are likely to call on Meat New Zealand to step into battle on their behalf.

However, they would do well to remember that the shareholding PPCS now has in Richmond was picked up as a direct result of their demands that Meat New Zealand get out of the commercial arena and let the companies get on with business.

* Glenys Christian can be contacted on email at glenys@farmindex.co.nz