Tom Willings and Tom Woolman return to The Poultry Network Podcast with an update on the new-look newsletter (and a reminder to add it to your safe sender list so it drops every Friday around 9:30am).

Then they’re joined by Rachel Evans, Director for Wales at the Countryside Alliance, to unpack the Alliance’s punchy research into where chicken served in Welsh school meals is sourced from.

Ms Evans says the findings are “atrocious”: some councils reported the vast majority of school chicken coming from outside the UK/EU, including Merthyr Tydfil (99.35% from Thailand and China), Conwy (94% outside the UK/EU), Gwynedd (87.62% from Brazil, Thailand and China) and Caerphilly (87.32%).

Anglesey said 100% of its chicken is British, and Anglesey and Bridgend said none comes from outside the EU.

Crucially, Ms Evans says not one of Wales’s 22 local authorities could state what percentage of their chicken was sourced from Wales.

The conversation ranges from tight school budgets and affordability to assurance schemes (many citing Red Tractor), the per-meal value rising to £3.40 after an £8m funding increase, and the climate-policy contradiction of importing food “from the other side of the world”.

Ms Evans calls for an urgent review of Welsh Government procurement frameworks and an annual, public sourcing report so parents can see exactly what’s on children’s plates.

The full report and dataset are available on the Countryside Alliance website.

UK egg consumption is climbing again, but welfare reform, planning and trade policy will determine whether domestic supply keeps up.

Tom Woolman and Tom Willings speak with BEIC CEO Nick Allen, eight months into the job after a career in soft fruit, on what the Government’s animal welfare strategy means for the sector.

Mr Allen sets out the BEIC’s remit across 11 trade bodies and the Lion Food Safety Scheme, then previews a £1.5m consumer campaign for 2026 aimed at health, protein and convenience, with millennials a key audience.

The demand signals are strong. UK sales hit 13.6 billion eggs in 2024 (around 26,000 a minute) and per‑capita consumption is put at 209 eggs a year, up from 199. Kantar points to roughly 5% volume growth through 2025.

On enriched colony cages, the consultation’s preferred 2032 end‑date (options range to 2038) raises feasibility questions. Replacing 6–7m hens could mean around 200 standard 32,000‑bird free‑range units and 2,500–3,000 hectares of land, on top of £400m+ already invested in the last transition out of conventional cages to colony.

Trade equivalence is the other pressure point. Ukrainian egg product imports have risen to around 11,000 tonnes in the year to Sept 2025, largely into manufacturing and foodservice and typically around 20% under UK equivalents. The UK is extending tariff‑free access from 31 March 2026 to 31 March 2028, while the EU runs a tariff‑rate quota.

Also covered are beak trimming progress via the Laying Hen Welfare Forum and why “zero‑day” in‑ovo sexing is the key milestone for male chicks.

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Campylobacter on supermarket chicken may have slipped from the headlines since the Food Standards Agency (FSA) surveys of 2014–15, but it hasn’t gone away.

In this Poultry Network Podcast episode, hosts Tom Willings and Tom Woolman revisit one of the poultry sector’s biggest food‑safety challenges and ask why Campylobacter remains a leading cause of gastroenteritis — with an estimated ~500,000 cases a year in the UK and a cost to the economy of over £1 billion.

Joining them is Professor Brendan Wren (London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine), Co‑Director of the Vaccine Centre and Co‑Director of the GlycoCell Engineering Biology Mission Hub.

Brendan explains why Campylobacter is so well adapted to birds (optimum growth around 42°C), how tiny doses (around 100 cells) can cause severe illness in humans, and why the “Campylobacter conundrum” persists: the bacterium is oxygen‑sensitive and doesn’t generally spread person‑to‑person, yet seems ever‑present in the food chain.

The conversation explores a provocative “missing link” — free‑living amoebae. Brendan’s research suggests amoebae can act like a Trojan horse, sheltering Campylobacter inside durable cysts and potentially making it more invasive when it emerges. If that’s true, it could reshape on‑farm thinking about prevention, surveillance and water hygiene.

Key topics include:
• What changed after the FSA findings — boot barriers, thinning practices and supply‑chain controls
• Why Campylobacter peaks in summer (and why it’s not just barbecue season)
• PCR‑based detection of Campylobacter within amoebae, and what it means for understanding transmission
• Practical interventions: drinking‑water filtration, UV, improved hygiene and targeted anti‑amoebae approaches
• Next steps: systematic farm sampling (including free‑range) to test the hypothesis and refine control strategies

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