Key points
Such is Jeremy Hall’s unassuming nature, it takes almost two hours in his company before he gets around to mentioning some of his career achievements. And with more than four decades of poultry industry experience behind him, they are certainly achievements worth recalling.
“I was involved in the development of the first added-value turkey products in the UK,” he says, with obvious pride. “I launched the first breaded poultry product, and the first chicken nugget – beating McDonald’s in the process – and I also pioneered the development of controlled atmosphere stunning.”
Yet, for all his accomplishments, Hall may just be on the cusp of his biggest success to date. In recent years, he has led a crusade against the scourge that is campylobacter – the bacteria currently responsible for more than 280,000 cases of food poisoning in the UK each year.
Armed with a technique known as rapid surface chilling (RSC), the affable northerner is on a mission to reduce campylobacter in poultry to levels recommended by the Food Standards Authority (FSA). And given the zeal with which he approaches the subject, few would bet against him.
Hall, who previously worked in technical roles at John Rannoch Foods and the Sovereign Food Group, has devoted a sizeable chunk of his 16 years at Bernard Matthews to developing RSC, which works by rapidly chilling the surface of poultry using vapour delivered at -196°C.
Rapid surface chilling (Return to top)
As we sit in the stately surroundings of Great Witchingham Hall, the Grade II listed country house bought and lived in by Bernard Matthews himself prior to his death in 2010, Hall tells me that the trial period for RSC is now over. He adds that gas supplier BOC, which has partnered on the project, is in the final stages of deciding where the first 12,000 birds an hour RSC site should be.
“The site will either be in the UK, or on the continent,” he explains. “It won’t be at a Bernard Matthews site though, as we hand-eviscerate our poultry.”
With the EU potentially legislating on safe campylobacter levels as soon as August, Hall says RSC could be taken up Europe-wide very quickly, should it prove successful.
“We believe the EU will adopt the FSA’s target of 90% carcasses carrying less than 1,000 campylobacters per gram. Currently, RSC is the only method that meets that target, so we are confident it will work. It just takes someone to adopt it, and push the whole thing forward.”
Developments in the machinery used in RSC has also pushed the extra cost per bird down to just 2p, from an original starting point of 6p a figure that Hall considers to be “a considerable uplift in a very competitive market”.
Success or failure, Hall certainly appears to have the food industry behind him, having been voted Personality of the Year at the Food Manufacture Excellence Awards 2015, held in London in November.
While declaring the award to have been a “wonderful surprise”, he is in no doubt that the win demonstrates just how emotive a subject campylobacter has become.
“It appears the voters were impressed to see cages being rattled on a subject that is close to everybody, and they obviously took the view that it’s something they want to see progressed.”
Of course, as the man responsible for the wellbeing of 60% of all the turkey meat produced in the UK, Hall clearly has more on his plate than a rogue bacteria.
Challenging times (Return to top)
It’s no secret that Bernard Matthews, which employs just shy of 2,100 people on 400-odd farms across Norfolk, Suffolk and Lincolnshire, has endured some difficult times in recent years. In 2007, it was hurt by a bird flu outbreak, and Jamie Oliver’s now infamous attack on its Turkey Twizzlers followed soon after.
Figures for the year to end of June 2015 show a fall in sales from £307M to £276M, with operating losses standing at £2M.
In spite of this, Hall talks confidently about a number of trends currently working towards the company’s advantage – the first one being the health credentials of turkey.
He specifically points to EU legislation introduced in 2014 that stated mincemeat can only be declared ‘lean’ if it has a fat content of 7% or less and a collagen content of 12% or less of the meat protein content.
“Whereas the fat content of chicken is too high, turkey comfortably falls within these levels,” Hall declares. “It also stays together very well when made into dishes like cottage pie and lasagne, despite having half the fat content of lean beef. We see turkey mince as one of the big growth areas over the next five years.”
Double chicken products (Return to top)
The company has also identified a major opportunity to double the number of chicken products it sells. Currently, chicken constitutes 5% of its overall output, with turkey making up the rest.
Part of the logic is to grow chicken sales to utilise space when turkey production is at its lowest, namely in the early part of the year. Another driving factor is the huge opportunity presented by China.
“We, together with a number of UK industry players, are very keen to obtain approval for export to China. The pork industry has succeeded, and we are hoping we’re next,” Hall explains.
“The UK is very much a breast-meat focused market, while in China they are much more interested in legs and wings, so the two markets could be quite complementary to each other.
“Demand for chicken meat is vastly outstripping supply in China, particularly so after they stopped importing breeding stock from the US in the wake of the avian flu outbreak, so exporting would work in everyone’s favour.”
Another exciting development at Bernard Matthews, according to Hall, has been the implementation of a number of environmental initiatives as part of a drive to be known as Britain’s greenest farmer.
“Together with green energy investors, we have invested more than £100M on green energy projects, such as wind turbines and large solar farms,” he explains. “We’re also in the process of installing more than 200 biomass boilers across 30 of our turkey farms.”
And then there’s the £500,000 investment in a new ‘performance house’ for turkeys, located at Foulsham in north Norfolk. Through real-time monitoring of feed and water consumption, plus the use of microphones to listen in on verbalisation cues, the purpose of the performance house is to better understand the needs of turkeys, in turn improving productivity.
“Our agriculture director Andrew Ballantyne appreciates that turkeys are completely different creatures to chickens. They are far more inquisitive, but they are also more susceptible to stresses and diseases,” Hall explains.
“With the performance house we won’t need to wait 20 weeks to get results on our turkey, we can monitor them as we go along.”
But all in all, campylobacter remains top of the agenda both for Hall, and the wider poultry industry. “Picking up the Personality of the Year award made me realise that campylobacter is a subject close to people’s hearts, and that food safety matters to everyone. We all need to eat, after all.”
Jeremy hall
- Job Title: Group technical director, Bernard Matthews
- AGE: 63
- Domestics: Single, with six children.
- Career Highlights: Food Manufacture Excellence Awards Personality of the Year 2015; Chair of the meat and poultry industry group at Campden BRI; former chair of the British Poultry Council technical/processing committee.
- Previous roles include: Technical executive, John Rannoch Foods; Technical director, Sovereign Food group.
- Hobbies: Watching rugby in the winter, and tennis during the summer. He also enjoys gardening and trips to the Norfolk coast.