Meat Marketing Seminar comes to Islay

Meat Marketing Seminar comes to Islay With the imminent opening of the new Avonvoggie Abattoir, Islay NFUS and the Argyll and Bute Agricultural Forum have organised an exciting one day ' Meat Marketing & Processing Seminar' on Thursday 20th March 2008 at the Machrie Hotel. The busy programme starts at 10.30am with a welcome by the day's Chairman, Stuart Wood, an Orkney Farmer, NFUS Vice Chairman & Vice Chairman of Orkney Meats. Stuart will open with a short overview of Marketing & Selling Orkney Meat. Our next speaker, keeping with the Island theme, is Karl Simpson from Shetland who will discuss the ups & downs of marketing & selling naturally reared Shetland lamb largely to London markets. Following the Shetland experience, Jim Fairlie will provide a more small scale farmers perspective on selling home produced meat on the internet, to farmers markets & local businesses. After a lunch break the exciting success story of Bruichladdich Distillery's global marketing & use of Islay branding will be told by Duncan Macgillvray , Distillery Manager . Following on from learning about the use of branding will be Paul Macglauhlin the Chief Executive of the new body Scotland Food and Drink. There will also be detail on the processing and marketing support of the new Scottish Rural Development Programme which should launch in March /April 2008. Plenty of time for group discussions, questions & suggestions. Our able Orcadian Chairman will conclude with a brief summary before a visit to the new abattoir & possibly a farm visit for our mainland visitors. The Seminar will end with an evening dinner using locally produced food & hopefully lots of locally produced whisky & beer. The cost for participating is £10 for the day seminar or £30 for the day + evening dinner. For mainland visitors the full package will be £50.We hope this will be the start of something exciting for local producers to plan the launch of new businesses . After the dire experience of 2007 where farmers sold lambs at prices seen 35 years ago, all possibilities are worth considering in this ever-changing global food market . If you are a local producer or want to be involved in any aspect of marketing , selling , processing or purchasing locally produced food & wish to attend the Seminar please contact Gill Johnstone at Balaclava on 01496302005 , e mail : Gill_johnstone@nfumutual.co.uk or Fergus Younger on 01586552502 , e mail :fergus.younger@sac.co.uk . Further details available on the Agricultural Forum website at www.argyllagriculturalforum.com

10 February 2008