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Bord Bia is moving beyond the need to tell the story of the dairy industry and is now focusing on what quantifiable claims the industry can stand over, Padraig Brennan of Bord Bia told those at the Irish Farmers Journal Dairy Day breakfast briefing.
Looking at the Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme (SDAS), Brennan said: “When we established SDAS our focus was collecting the data to allow us to stand over the claims we make and help us gain acquisitions in the marketplace.”
Brennan said that research and development is vital to the dairy industry, with a lot of expertise at farm level being a big plus for Irish dairy.
International recognition
“Those three components are the key to me. When we travel internationally, even in Malaysia and Indonesia recently on the trade mission, the awareness of Ireland was a lot lower than we’d like it to be. The reality is, if you look at New Zealand, Australia, the United States, they are probably better established in some of these emerging markets than we are.
“Individual companies will be well-known, but the first job of work for us is to say well what is it about Ireland, what are the credentials that we have in terms of how we produce our dairy products – that’s what we try and do through the Origin Green programme.
“Moving on to the second part of that, when we begin those conversations and we’re making progress at building awareness, what claims can you offer, how can you quantify what you’re saying.
“We’re now focusing on what are the quantifiable claims that we can stand over as an industry.”
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