PROGRAM

Present and future challenges in the egg industry

Antonio Hernandiz, Director of Animal Health at Grupo Huevos Guillén, was in charge of the presentation on "Present and future challenges in the egg industry" during the LPN Congress 2018.

Since DR. Charles Darwin described in his book "The Origin of Species" the evolutionary process that has governed existence since the origin of life, we have learned that living beings on this planet, if they want to succeed, must adapt to the environment that surrounds them. This process is continuous and may have more pronounced turning points depending on the demands of the circumstances of this environment.

As a living entity, the egg-producing industry must be malleable and always adapt to the circumstances surrounding it. Thus, these means are different in different regions of the world, depending on the geography, the availability of soil, water, or cereals, and greater technological factors of production or consumer preferences. Even within each region, each player in this industry can (and should) focus on its capabilities and circumstances and thus specialize.

In this sense, the European region, with specific circumstances that determine its fate (resources, means, consumer, legal, environmental), is one of the world regions that is exerting the most significant evolutionary pressure on the egg-producing industries that are present there. Among all the factors that are exerting pressure, we can highlight those that, in the author's opinion, are more decisive, being classified within a scheme of preparation for the evolutionary challenge.

Strengths

The actors of the Poultry Industry can carry out an act of reflection on the product they handle. The egg is a food of excellent quality, nutritionally rich, and has an enormous capacity to penetrate the diets of cultures worldwide.

But that is not enough because you must know how to strengthen yourself even more to face the evolutionary challenge:

• Being a specialist: the European experience allows us to know that specialization within the production chain is very effective in gaining strength within the sector. Therefore, the vertical integration model is one that we can highlight as interesting.
• Being effective: studying the business model in depth is necessary to correctly manage the resources required to produce, optimize costs and maximize margins.
• Being reliable: the ability to respond in service to the market in a clear, traceable, and transparent way, offering safe products, are very determining factors when it comes to building loyalty in a market.
• Being scalable: having the maximum capacity to grow or shrink flexibly is extremely important to support different market moments.
• Be demanding with the quality of the product: the egg does not need supplements; We only have to take care of what characterizes it: shell, white, and yolk reaching the maximum in every detail.
• Be demanding with the health of birds: poultry stakeholders will be stronger to the extent that they approach animal health management from the perspective of "One world, One Health."

Like any sector, the Egg Industry has weaknesses. However, if you want evolutionary success, any actor must work on them, correcting them or, where appropriate, minimizing them.

Knowing the weaknesses allows us to react, prevent, and combat them. Among them are:

• Be more respectful with productive capital: Birds: Productive practices will not be understood in developed cultures without respecting animals. Animal behavior and welfare must be known and respected for this, without biases and restrictions.

• Be more respectful with the tools to cure their diseases: poultry stakeholders will be less weak to the extent that therapeutic or meta phylactic policies are changed for prophylactic and preventive practices, reducing as much as possible the use of antibiotics and the resistance of bacteria to these.

• Being more respectful of the environment surrounding us: implementing the best available techniques to reduce emissions and waste from poultry activity reduces the fragility of any actor.

Image

On many occasions, the strongest actor with the best-managed weaknesses does not end up being successful, as it also requires optimal image projection, specifically a positive image.

Any strategy to adequately manage the image of a poultry actor is enriching and allows it to adapt better to change. Of all the strategies that may be included in this idea, the following stand out:

• Communication plan: refers to the strategy that someone establishes to convey a message to someone. Thus, it is important to define yourself as the message's sender, develop the messages you want to transmit, the means through which you want to do it and characterize the receiver of the message. Action in the event of a crisis must be included in this strategy.

• Identify with a brand: the idea of anchoring to an image or a slogan the traits or characteristics that identify an actor may be interesting (or not).
• Have a Corporate Social Responsibility policy: that projects the idea that the actor is not only concerned with capital but that other more altruistic objectives, positive for society, are included in its global strategy.
• Have a policy of Respect for the environment: that projects the idea that the actor is not only concerned about capital, society, and culture but also that their activity has the least impact on the health of the environment atmosphere.

To the extent that an actor in the Egg Production Industry considers their strengths, they decide to expand them, reduce their weaknesses, and project a positive image of themselves.

Suppose it aligns with the points described above (which result from a European experience). In that case, it will be able to be more effective in the process of evolutionary adaptation.