The ABNA feed mill at Cupar recently received a visit from two MEPs for Scotland to discuss the impact of European legislation on the business.

John Purvis MEP who comes from the St Andrews area is Vice Chairman of the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee and Struan Stevenson MEP is agriculture spokesman for the largest political grouping in the Parliament.

Des D’Souza (Corporate Affairs Manager) of ABNA Ltd, said: “We really appreciate the time spent at our mill. It gave us the opportunity to highlight how ABNA operates to the highest standards in producing safe, high quality feeds to help our customers play their role in the UK food chain.”
Mr Purvis said he and Mr Stevenson were very impressed by the company’s high standards of cleanliness, feed and environment safety measures, product quality and computerised processing.

“These are essential requirements with today's strict food and feedstuff regulations which come nowadays from European legislation prompted by the various food scares of the last few years”, he said.

“MEPs have the opportunity directly to determine this legislation in the European Parliament.

“Therefore we discussed with Mr D'Souza , Angela Booth and Gordon Jessiman of ABNA , how the existing regulations were working and discussed a pending EU directive on feed hygiene standards which has important implications for the livestock industry.”

Scotland has a major pig and poultry industry which is supplied with much of its feedstuffs from the Cupar Mill which in turn uses the cereal output of Fife and Eastern Scotland farms.

“With Struan covering agriculture and myself covering industry and trade in the European Parliament, we will now be all the more able to represent the interests of these important industries, “ Mr Purvis added.


Notes to Editors

1.ABNA (Associated British Nutrition and Agriproducts) is the agricultural group of Associated British Foods (ABF), which is the largest purchaser of agricultural output from UK farms.

2. ABNA is the UK's leading agribusiness company, supplying seed and fertilisers, manufacturing and supplying feed and buying grain and other products from thousands of farmers nation-wide. Around 1,500 people are employed across the country.

3. Compound feed is produced at Cupar and 17 other ABNA mills in the UK.