From the Chairman
Uploaded October 2008

Newbury Show

I am very much looking forward to seeing as many members as possible at The Royal Berkshire County Show at Newbury on 20th and f21st September. Berkshire Classes will be held on the Saturday and Julian Collings will be judging our Champion of Champions on the Sunday. We are once again indebted to the P.G.Wodehouse Society (Click) for sponsoring this important event in the Club calendar, and look forward their Chairman, Hilary Bruce, presenting the Jo Clarke Memorial Trophy to the 2007/2008 Champion Sharon Barnfield, Club Secretary is busy chasing up qualifiers from both this year and last year, when Newbury was cancelled.

Waitrose"Berkshire" Pork

I am sorry to report a disappointing lack of progress in respect of the above. For those of you who were at the Club AGM earlier the cross bred pork from imparted Canadian Berkshire boars being sold in some Waitrose stores was discussed in some detail. At that time we were waiting to attend a meeting with Waitrose which had been set up at their request.

Chris Coe, David Webb, Richard Clarke CEO of the RBST (click) and I met Heather Jenkins of Waitrose and other personnel from Waitrose and BQP. At the outset of the meeting we were asked by Heather Jenkins to agree to all discussions being treated as confidential. We outlined the concerns of Berkshire breeders and submitted some suggested alterations to Waitrose's promotional material which we believed would more accurately define the product. We also suggested that Waitrose should become involved in a programme of Breed conservation and support. At the end of the meeting we were asked to come up with specific proposals and to attend a further meeting within approximately a month.

The BPA (click) and RBST and put together a detailed Joint proposal for a Breed support programme and eventually we were able to agree a date with Waitrose for the 2nd meeting. When the time for this came Heather Jenkins was not able to attend due to a family bereavement. The 2nd meeting was attended by Marcus Bates for BPA, Richard Clarke RBST and Chris Coe and I representing Berkshire breeders with Andrew Saunders and his assistant from BQP. Chris outlined the proposals and they were discussed in some detail. Andrew Saunders proposed that there would be a further meeting one month later on July 10th with Heather Jenkins of Waitrose to progress matters.

As this date approached, no time or place for this had been set and eventually the meeting was replaced by a conference call involving Andrew Saunders, Marcus Bates , Richard Clarke Chris, who had also provided the facilities for this call. It is my understanding that this conference call did not advance the situation in any concrete way.
 
So, to sum up it seems that a fair amount of time has gone by and we are not much further forward in some respects. However the whole matter of labelling in the pig sector has been revisited by Lacors (click) who advise Trading Standards (click) on this and here it looks as if some real progress might have been made. Much of the credit for this should go to Richard Lutwyche and the MPs who lobbied Lacors. Richard on behalf of the GOS Breeders Club (click), and Marcus (BPA) and Richard Clarke (RBST) all made submissions on the subject to Lacors.

I also understand that some of Waitrose's promotional material has now been re-written and look forward to seeing copies in due course.

Meanwhile could a any members who have a Waitrose store selling "Berkshire" pork contact me with location and details.

Viki Mills, Editor
01363 82465
07843 301903
vikimills@googlemail.com