The future of the Dutch egg processing industry

This research examines the competitiveness of the Dutch egg products industry, as well as the consequences of tightening up the laws concerning layer poultry on the competitive position of the Dutch egg production industry. A tightening of the laws has, in fact, the effect of raising the production cost, and in this research the central question revolves around whether animal welfare-friendly egg products are perceived as products with added value by the buyers of egg products (mainly industrial buyers) and will thus also be offered for sale at a higher price. Furthermore, it will be investigated what the probable developmental directions are in the egg products industry if this higher price cannot be realised.Livestock Production/Industries,

Kostprijsontwikkeling consumptie- eieren 2004-2012: Basisjaar 2004

This report relates to a comparative study of the production cost of eggs in 2004 in some EU countries and Brazil and the USA. This was supplemented by a review of the prospects up until 2012. An insight was obtained into the national developments in animal welfare, environmental measures, and food safety. It was concluded that the production cost of eggs in the EU will further increase and as a result the difference in production cost with the non-EU countries will further increase. In the EU, Dutch and German layer farmers are confronted with additional animal-welfare and environmental regulations as compared to their counterparts in France, Spain and Poland. In dit rapport worden de kostprijzen van eieren in 2004 van verschillende EU-landen vergeleken met Brazilië en de Verenigde Staten. Voor alle genoemde landen is een doorkijk gemaakt naar het jaar 2012. Per land zijn de ontwikkelingen op het gebied van dierenwelzijn, milieu en voedselveiligheid in kaart gebracht. Geconcludeerd wordt dat in de EUlanden de komende jaren de kostprijs voor eieren zal stijgen, waardoor het verschil met de niet-EU-landen verder toeneemt. Binnen de EU hebben de leghennenhouders in Nederland en Duitsland te maken met extra regelgeving op het gebied van dierenwelzijn en milieu in vergelijking met Frankrijk, Spanje en Polen.Livestock Production/Industries,

Handelsstromen van pluimveevlees

This study provides an insight into the goods flows of (raw) poultry meat within - and, in particular, to - the Netherlands, and into the associated zoonosis risks. The study offers input for an inspection policy that will be required to enforce the intended prohibition on the marketing of raw poultry meat infected with Campylobacter and Salmonella. The Netherlands is an important poultry-meat trading country, and consequently the interviewees endorsed the importance of the reduction of zoonosis; they were also of the opinion that good Salmonella and Campylobacter control measures are in place in the Netherlands. In addition, it was also concluded that the retail sale of poultry meat that is free of Campylobacter and Salmonella is not currently a feasible proposition in the Netherlands.International Relations/Trade,

AUTOMATED AND REACTIVE MECHANISM IN CONNECTIVITY FAULT MANAGEMENT (CFM) WITH AN ON-DEVICE EXPERT SYSTEM

Presented herein is an “On-Device Expert System” for implementation at devices operating in accordance with Connectivity Fault Management (CFM). In particular, in addition to fault detection/verification/notification, the techniques presented herein now enable fault device/link identification. The “On-Device Expert System” performs telemetry operations inside the device itself, instead of having the same operations performed in a controller. As such, the techniques presented herein avoid the need for multiple resources usage in the controller for the same telemetry details. With the “On-Device Expert System” providing the needed telemetry details to the controller, the controller now can directly trigger the application associated with a received telemetry message and perform the remedial/enhancement/notification needed for the networks

Anticipating morphological and syntactic structures : investigating the pre-activation negativity

It is known that listeners can predict upcoming words based on constraining contexts (e.g. DeLong et al., 2005). In a recent study, we proposed a left frontal brain potential, the pre-activation negativity, PrAN (Söderström et al., 2016), thought to reflect pre-activation of expected word continuations. Time-locked to word-initial fragments, PrAN’s amplitude was found to increase in a 136-280 ms time window as the number of possible continuations decreased, suggesting that PrAN increased with increased predictive certainty about a word’s ending. In the present study, we tested whether a similar effect could be found for pre-activation of expected syntactic structures. In Swedish, intonation is used to signal whether an unfolding embedded clause is a main or subordinate clause. Specifically, a clause-initial word with a low boundary tone cues only subordinate clause structure. Conversely, a corresponding high tone signals that any kind of embedded main clause structure may follow, i.e. it cues a more open set of structures. Test participants listened to complex sentences and judged the word order of the verb (V) and negation (NEG) after the boundary tone as quickly as possible (NEG–V word order occurs in subordinate clauses and V–NEG in main clauses). ERPs were time-locked to the tone-bearing syllable. A repeated-measures ANOVA showed a negativity in left anterior electrodes at 136-280 ms for low initial boundary tones, which cue only subordinate clauses. We propose that this effect is a PrAN, but that it here reflects pre-activation of syntactic structures rather than possible word endings

Word tones cueing morphosyntactic structure: Neuroanatomical substrates and activation time-course assessed by EEG and fMRI

AbstractPrevious studies distinguish between right hemisphere-dominant processing of prosodic/tonal information and left-hemispheric modulation of grammatical information as well as lexical tones. Swedish word accents offer a prime testing ground to better understand this division. Although similar to lexical tones, word accents are determined by words’ morphosyntactic structure, which enables listeners to use the tone at the beginning of a word to predict its grammatical ending. We recorded electrophysiological and hemodynamic brain responses to words where stem tones matched or mismatched inflectional suffixes. Tones produced brain potential effects after 136ms, correlating with subject variability in average BOLD in left primary auditory cortex, superior temporal gyrus, and inferior frontal gyrus. Invalidly cued suffixes activated the left inferior parietal lobe, arguably reflecting increased processing cost of their meaning. Thus, interaction of word accent tones with grammatical morphology yielded a rapid neural response correlating in subject variability with activations in predominantly left-hemispheric brain areas

Production costs of the Mexican poultry and pig sector : Quick scan on the consequences for the EU poultry and pig sector after free trade with Mexico

Wageningen Economic Research conducted a study on the potential consequences of a free trade agreement between Mexico and the EU. The Dutch government is concerned that giving access to products from countries with a lower level of animal welfare could undermine the EU welfare standard. This study shows that production costs are lower in Mexico compared to the EU in all three sectors investigated: egg production, poultry meat and pig meat. In egg production in particular, the welfare standard in Mexico is far below the EU standard. Nevertheless, it is concluded that for all products (eggs, egg products, poultry meat and pig meat) in a free trade situation no large amount of imports from Mexico can be expected

Vleesconsumptie per hoofd van de bevolking in Nederland, 2005-2018

Deze nota geeft een overzicht van de vleesconsumptie per hoofd van de bevolking in Nederland in de jaren 2005-2018. Het totale verbruik van vlees en vleeswaren per hoofd van de bevolking in Nederland ligt in 2018 iets boven de 77 kg (op basis van karkasgewicht). Dit is ruim een halve kilo meer dan in 2017