Keynote Speakers

New principles for farmers’ product information: Inform once, accepted everywhere. (Knut Jørstad, Chairman Goods Inline AS)

In the pressure for product information delivery – the food industry has navigated 180° wrong. The exchange and trade of product information has become a multibillion global business, all at the cost of the farmers. The Scandinavian farmers in 2009 are obliged to deliver information to 200 entities. Encompassing anything from taxation, agricultural departments to NGO’s, consumer organizations and audits. This is no longer sustainable for the farmer. The requirements for compliance having built up over the last 10-15 years are all profitable for someone in the value-chain, but always at the cost of the farmers. So what to do? The most relevant must be to follow the principle achieved for the use of auditing standards under Consumer Goods Forum (former CIES) and their Global Food Safety Initiative. In 2007 they reached the point where all major retailers and manufacturers agreed to accept the core of certification standards from FQS, HACCP, IFS and now 12 additional comparable schemes, to be accepted by all signatory parties. Taking these principles and adding the qualities of modern IT solutions and their enhanced capability for information extraction and exchange, we would seem obvious that we should not require that farmers’ deliver their information more than one time, in one place. Given this structure, all parties dependent on and profiting from the information should be given access to the information and extract what they desire. This is in no way revolutionary in the sense that a lot of alteration is needed at prohibitive cost or that it will take ten years to achieve the goal. It is more a question of ‘turning the tables’ as development now enables information flows to be reorganized. Vehicles to handle such information could be any network that has open API’s for import and export of data in well defined formats. My examples are connected to the Goods Inline network as this is what I have created after working with food traceability networks for more than 10 years, but I will welcome every other network having the same openness to data exchange.

Knut Jørstad:Knut Jørstad is a serial founder who has been active in the development of a variety of global Internet services since 1994 including; first sales of services over Internet globally, search engines, news analysis, classifieds engines, online stock trading, online banking and —maybe most importantly— for the last 10 years: food traceability networks. After building up a major consulting and solution development company in Scandinavia from 1994, taking it public in 1999 and divesting it to a French group in 2000, his efforts have been focused on the need for improved information flow in global trade. First in TraceTracker through the building of the GTNet as a network for the manufacturing industry. His latest effort is to create a social network for products in Goods Inline, designed to help out on the situation for primary producers and SMB's, who are being squeezed through the ever extending information exchange requirements. Knut has been an active member of a variety of boards for Food Traceability standards; in the Global Food Safety Initiative (2003), GS1 (2005), TraceFish (2003) and has also delivered IT-services to all existing EU food traceability projects to date; Seafood Plus, Trace and CuteLoop. He also led a traceability project in Vietnam during the Avian Influenza outbreak in 2006, responding to a request from WHO / FAO. This became an integrated part of the new compartmentalization strategies. In addition he delivered the framework for a Chinese traceability network supported on the minister level both in China and EU in 2008.

  

Providing market access for livestock farming via certified good agricultural practices (Dr Roland Aumüller à Specialist Veterinary Surgeon Animal Breeding and Biotechnology GLOBALG.A.P, Expert for Livestock and Feed)

GLOBALG.A.P is a private sector body that sets voluntary standards for the certification of production processes of agricultural  products around the globe. Its standards add value for primary producers in two ways: by providing practical advice through its good practice documents and by providing access to high value markets, which use GLOBALG.A.P. certification schemes as a warranty for safe quality food. The presentation will give insights in key elements of the scheme for livestock  farming and quality assurance. The role of good practices, the certification process and the current developments in GLOBALG.A.P. livestock modules as well as the value of implementation for the livestock sector will be addressed.

Dr Roland Aumüller: Dr. Roland Aumüller has 30 years of experience as a specialist veterinary surgeon for livestock production. He is an independent senior veterinary consultant and is contracted by several companies. Consulting GLOBALG.A.P´s as expert for livestock and feed issues, there his activities focus on food and feed safety, animal health and animal welfare as well as sustainability. His responsibilities are the coordination of development and the management of standards for good agricultural practice and integrated quality assurance in the field of livestock and compound feed production. His latest projects for GLOBALGAP are the Version 2 of Compound Feed Manufacturing Standard and the standards for Calf/Young Beef and for Commercial Turkey production. Having graduated in 1980 at the University of Munich, Germany, his PhD research assignment was at Veterinary School of Hannover, Germany, from which he received in 1982 the academic degree Dr. med. vet. By acquiring the requested professional experiences and by passing the relevant exams, he was given two appointments as specialist veterinary surgeon: in 1987 for Animal Reproduction and in 1999 for Animal Breeding and Biotechnology. For 25 years he was working as managing director and CEO for cattle and pig A. I. centers and breeding companies in Germany. His practical involvement in animal breeding and reproduction and the numerous training courses given to farmers have always been a good basis for linking to research in livestock. Being the administrative manager of Bavarian Research Center for Biology in Reproduction from 1994 -2004 and chairing it from 2004-2007 is one example of numerous unsalaried tasks in different boards and organizations. At European level Dr. Aumüller is member of the steering committee of European Forum of Farm Animal Breeders, EFFAB. As member of the advisory committee he was involved in the EU Welfare Quality research project. From 2008 -2010 he coordinated the European Animal Health Data Comparison Project, which is part of European Animal Disease Genomic Network. At European and international conferences Dr. Aumüller contributed as invited speaker by lectures, as member of panels and as moderator of workshops.

 

Food traceability – which way to go? (Petter Olsen: Senior Researcher at Nofima Market, Associate Professor University of Tromsoe)

Food traceability in the commercial space has been misunderstood as a uni-dimensional food safety requirement. Quite on the contrary, food traceability is an enabling technology with a large number of drivers. An analysis of such drivers will be presented in detail, as well as a clarification of the generally misunderstood nature of traceability. As an infrastructure, traceability is as such contents-neutral and requires a mutual agreement between sender and receiver in order to be able to interpret the contents of the message sent over said infrastructure. Standardisation is key in order to streamline the implementation effort of the food industry with respect to information requirements from the three high-value importing blocks USA, Europe and Japan. We will report on the on-going ISO standardisation efforts for fish, as well as on TraceFood, a voluntary standard that was developed together by a number of relevant entities in the traceability sector. More information on TraceFood is available on www.foodtraceability.eu and www.tracefood.org.

Petter Olsen: MSc in software engineering, applied mathematics and operational research from University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland 1986. Worked on large software applications providing traceability for crude oil and natural gas from 1986. Senior scientist at “Nofima” (the Norwegian food research institute) - “Division of Economics and Marketing Research” (previously “The Norwegian Institute of Fisheries and Aquaculture Research”) since 1993. Working mainly with applications of ICT in the food and fish industry, especially related to production management, simulation, traceability and related method and standard development. Initiated, co-ordinated and participated in numerous traceability projects, including several pilot implementation projects and software development projects for improved traceability in various food sectors. Teaching courses and workshops on applications of ICT and traceability in the food industry, and supervising students. Co-ordinator of the EU 5FP TraceFish project and co-ordinator of the Traceability Systems Group in the EU 6FP TRACE project. Served as national representative in ISO TC34/WG9 (food traceability) and is now convener of ISO TC234/WG1 (seafood traceability). Serves as an adviser to the EU, various EU-projects, the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Nordic Industrial Fund on these subjects.

 

BrightAnimal – an attempt to make Precision Livestock Farming work (Dr Heiner Lehr : Technical Director FoodReg, Co-ordinator BrightAnimal)

Precision Livestock Farming (PLF) has the potential to improve the livelihood of animals and farmers while providing better food to consumers. PLF is largely perceived to be the future of livestock farming in developed and developing countries. However in the past, much of the efforts in PLF have concentrated on the engineering side without taking the bigger picture into the consideration. The EU project BrightAnimal is developing a view on what practical and acceptable PLF should look like in Europe and beyond. We will present results from the project, killer applications in Precision Livestock Farming in dairy, pig, egg and aquaculture fish farming and a view where PLF is heading.

Dr Heiner Lehr: Dr. Heiner Lehr holds a PhD in Natural Sciences (“summa cum laude”) from the Technical University Berlin. He has a long career in international IT, specialising in consulting and development of large-scale international projects. He has worked for a large variety of companies, including media giant Bertelsmann AG. Before turning his attention to food, he has led prestigious projects in the area of supply chain management and was also a pioneer in interactive television. In 2003, he joined FoodReg as the International Technical Director of FoodReg AG and Technical Director for FoodReg Malaysia Sdn Bhd. Dr Heiner Lehr has been actively involved in traceability and food information management since 2003. In Thailand, he has been the Lead Consultant for the Thailand National Traceability Project for the Thailand National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards. He is the International Technical Supervisor for the Malaysia Food Information and Traceability (M-FIT) Project, a national traceability project for Malaysia. In Vietnam he has designed a traceability system for seafood for the Ministry of Agriculture. He regularly speaks on international conference about food information and traceability. Heiner is very active in palm oil traceability for FoodReg largest private client, Sime Darby, taking special interest in sustainability and green house gas emissions of this commodity. In addition he holds the post of Enterprise Application Director for the EU TRACE project, Europe’s biggest project on food traceability, in which FoodReg is playing a central role. He represents FoodReg as a key partner in the work of TraceFood, which is integrating the results of the three European projects TRACE, SeaFood Plus and TraceFish. He is one of the main participants in the definition of the EU-sponsored work to create an open standard for the interchange of traceability information (TraceCore XML). He is also the technical co-coordinator of BrightAnimal, an EU project on Precision Livestock Farming. Dr Heiner Lehr has been appointed a Reviewer for the European Commission to revise the progress of its funded projects. He has been an officially accredited observer to the 10th MSC Malaysia International Advisory Panel.

 

Traceability in Egypt – Success Story and Future Challenges (Alaa Fahmy à Director E-TRACE Egypt/UNIDO)

The presentation will demonstrate the success story of UNIDO/ETRACE Center in Egypt in establishing an effective traceability system for the fresh produce industry. It will provide an overview on the framework, the implementation methodology and how the challenges were overcome. The sustainability model of the center will be presented, as well as its south-south dimension in transferring experiences and knowhow to other countries.

Alaa Fahmy: Alaa Fahmy holds a B. Sc. And an M. Sc in Process Engineering, from the Cairo University, a Ph. D. in Process Engineering from the Hannover University, a Mini MBA in Agribusiness from  Santa Clara University and an MBA in International Markets from the Arab Academy for Science and Technology. He has been employed as National Technical Manager, UNIDO/Etrace, Program Manager for North South Consultants Exchange, Cairo, Egypt, Deputy Executive Dirtector, Horticultural Export Improvement Association in Cairo, Food Processing Council Manager at the Horticultural Export Improvement Association, Consultant for the Food Processing Technical Services, Agriculture Led Export Businesses (ALEB), a USAID project, Cairo, Egypt and he is working as National Project Director at UNIDO/Etrace. He has also been a Lecturer at the Department of Chemical Engineering at Cairo University, Research Engineer at the Institute of Process Engineering, Hannover University and Assistant Lecturer at Cairo University, Chemical Engineering Department, while he was worked on various assignments as process engineer at private sector companies and development projects. He has a strong experience in business development and project cycle management from conceptualization to implementation and evaluation, while he has working experience in conducting studies and research including market research, sector and sub-sector analyses, strategy development, business and marketing plans, feasibility studies, needs and impact assessments and project evaluation.