ELPHA to represent European poultry industry

25-03-2015 | Home | Article

ELPHA (European Live Poultry and Poultry Hatching Egg Association) has been established on 23rd of March 2015. Goal of the new organisation is a better representation and promotion of the common interests of the European live poultry businesses in the policy area of live poultry and hatching eggs towards the European institutions such as the European Commission and the European Parliament.

ELPHA was established in a meeting that gathered the founding members the European associations EPB (poultry breeders), AEH (hatcheries) and EPEXA (traders of hatching eggs and day-old chicks) and the national associations BPC (British Poultry Council), BTT (Hungarian Poultry Product Association) and ZDG (Central German Poultry Organisation).

The main interests of ELPHA members are in the areas of EU trade and export, animal health, animal welfare and genetics, while at the same time the base of food safety and security starts with the production of live poultry.

The Executive Board of ELPHA consists of President Jacques de Lange (NL), Vice President Graeme Dear (UK), Treasurer Anton Butijn (NL), Leo Graf von Drechsel (DE) and Thijs Hendrix (NL), Andrew Large and Louis Perrault have been appointed as Deputy Member of the Executive Board.

The mission of the Executive Board will be:

to initiate actions especially in the interests of the activities ELPHA is representing;
to actively stimulate and motivate members and experts in cooperating in working groups and other committees;
to represent ELPHA toward the European institution in meetings with Commission officials and Members of the European Parliament.

ELPHA represents a sector with a production of about 8.5 billion hatching eggs. About 1 billion hatching eggs are exported to outside the EU with a value of over €250 million, and a similar number is traded within the EU. More than 6 billion day old chicks for poultry meat production and about 400 million day old layers for table egg production are hatched from these hatching eggs.