KU Kamphaengsaen Beef Producer Co-op

My day didn’t start until 11 a.m. today which was nice because I have been starting at 7 a.m. most other mornings. Apparently today was a government holiday in Thailand that loosely translates as Agriculture Day. There is a ceremony were a cow/buffalo is allowed to choose between many different items to eat and depending on what she chooses there is a prediction about the crops for the coming year. In another ceremony the King or Prince spreads some of the country’s best rice seeds and later farmers try to pick up as many as they can to bring them good fortune. Unfortunately, nobody told me about this until it was over as I would have liked to attend.

Today I had a translator for the first time in Thailand. Her shortened name is Ja and she is a veterinary student at the university we visited. I really enjoyed visiting with her on the way to and from our meeting. We traveled to Nakhon Pathom Province to the KU Kamphangsaen Campus Beef Producer Cooperative. By the way KU stands for Kasetsart University not The University of Kansas. The university has developed a breed of cattle that is well suited to Thailand’s tropical climate. They crossed the native cattle with Brahman and then crossed the offspring with Charolais cattle. The new breed is 25% Native, 25% Brahman and 50% Charolais. They call it Kamphangsaen. After developing the breed they started building a network of farms to raise these cattle. There are Cow-Calf, Stocker and Feed Lot phases and the individual producers are members of the cooperative. In addition to being paid for their cattle based on carcass score when they sell them to the co-op they also share in any profits the co-op makes at the end of the year. The first picture below is of one of their T-Bone steaks. The second picture is of an RFID ear tag that is used in their national tracing system. Foot and Mouth Disease still exists in some parts of this country, mostly near the borders, so it is important to know where cattle are coming from. The members also keep detailed health records on each animal. The co-op is growing fast with about 800 head slaughtered in 2006 and 1622 head in 2007. Demand continues to grow in Thailand but they cannot export because of FMD. The third picture below is a steer at a feed lot farm; their steers are about 3 years old when they go to slaughter. They also run their own restaurant on campus. When you enter their location there is a large sign over the gate that says Cowboy Land and has a cowboy on a horse roping a steer. There are also signs for Texas Steak and the last picture is of the entrance to the restaurant, notice the cowboy and Indian décor complete with teepees. We ate at the restaurant and I had a ribeye steak it was good and tender but it was cut very thin by U.S. standards.

Betagro

On Wednesday evening I went out exploring for a restaurant to have dinner. As I walked down the very busy street that my hotel is on I came upon an elephant. Elephants were historically used as labor in the timber industry and other industries in Thailand. Now they are out of work and some are reduced to having their owners beg tourists to pay to feed them. I have no idea where this young elephant lives the rest of the day, as this is a very congested part of Bangkok.

On Thursday morning I went to meet Dr. Arayan Trangarn at the Betagro headquarters. Betagro is a privately owned company that is also involved in the poultry and hog integration industry here in Thailand. They also have some operations in China, Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. The owner of the company is a Chinese gentleman who immigrated to Thailand many years ago and started with nothing. He first started a feed mill and then expanded into the poultry and swine industries. They are involved in many of the same operations as the CP Group but they don’t really seem to have a competitive relationship. Betagro actually benefits from some of the lobbying activities and influence that CP Group has. We first met with the CEO of the company and then we traveled to Lopburi Province to their Food Complex 1. They chose this location because it is near the corn production area of Thailand but they still have to import a lot of their feed ingredients from other countries. They are now considering locating any new plants they build closer to the port because of the increase in transportation costs. When the Avian Influenza outbreak occurred in Thailand they were impacted and had a cull a large number of birds. Since then there have been many changes to their operations. In hindsight Dr. Trangarn thinks it has been a positive thing for the company. In addition to instituting more advanced practices and more security on their farms, they have also had to build new plants to further process their chicken thus adding value to their products. They currently export these cooked products to the EU and Japan. They were the first company to use an electronic traceability program in Thailand. It is all computerized and is quite impressive in the detail that they can access. Consumers can not access it over the internet yet but they do have what they call “Spy on Me” terminals in some domestic supermarkets where some of the information can be accessed. These terminals also give recipes for how to cook the products, which consumers seem to be more interested in than the traceability information. The traceability system at this plant requires 20 full-time employees and costs more than 1 million Baht per year and that number would at least double if it included all of the other parts of the production process. We toured the further processing plant and it was a very sanitary facility and I had to put on a lot more protective clothing and wash my hands many more times than I would to tour a plant in the U.S. The major difference that I noticed was that they were doing a lot of hand slicing and cubing of the product. Labor here is cheap and so they can do this kind of time consuming processing. However there is a shortage of labor and they would like to open another plant to produce more skewered products for the Japanese market but they aren’t sure they can find the workforce. Even though labor costs are low the cost of feed still makes producing chicken in Thailand more expensive than in the U.S. so they are not sure that they would support a Free Trade Agreement. As always no photos were allowed in the plant.

On the way back to Bangkok we made an unscheduled stop at a huge wholesale market. This one was much cleaner than the one I saw in China with the Oklahoma Agricultural Leadership Program Group. The meat section still wouldn’t meet U.S. standards. Below is a picture of one of the poultry vendors and another of a fruit stand. The bottom picture is of some of the fruits that Dr. Trangarn bought for me to try. Clockwise they are a Rose Apple, a Rambutan, a Mangosteen, Lychees and Longans.

Bangkok Produce Merchandising Public Co.,Ltd.

This morning I met Dr. Wanchai Pholprasertku with the Department of Livestock Development and he escorted me to Saraburi Province to Bangkok Produce Merchandising Public Co., Ltd. They are a division of the CP Group which is a huge multi-national company that is involved in many industries including telecommunications, real estate, motorcycle manufacturing, medical supplies and retail but its origins are in agriculture and food production. They have operations in Thailand, China, Indonesia, India and Turkey and export around the world. This facility is a chicken processing operation with both a fresh chicken facility and a further processed plant. They produce every possible chicken product that any country could want. Because of Avian Influenza they can only export cooked product. Although they have had no cases of AI in their fully enclosed, climate controlled poultry houses, there have been cases in Thailand and so there is a ban on the export of fresh poultry. They showed me a video about the on-farm production side of the business and it appears that they use all of the same advanced technology that is used in the American poultry industry. They produce their own feed; have their own breeder hens, hatchery, broiler farms and processing facilities. I was given a tour of their further processing facilities and slaughter facility. They are both just as sanitary as, or more sanitary than, the Tyson plant I toured in Oklahoma. Although at the Tyson plant we walked through the production floor and at this plant they have a glassed in walkway where you look into the plant, so you don’t get quite as close up of an experience. In addition to meeting every possible food safety and good manufacturing standard they also meet Halal standards so they can export to Muslim countries. As far as I can tell this means they stun using electric shock making sure the chickens aren’t stunned to death and they have a Muslim do the slaughtering. Their products are completely traceable back to the farm. As with all processing facilities they don’t allow pictures so the only one I have to offer is this one of the many ready-to-eat products they produce.

Thai Food Safety Meetings

This morning I met with my Program Administrators for Thailand, Paul Wedel and Patcharee Pinitsuwan (Khun Lek) with the Kenan Institute Asia. Then I met with two government agencies this afternoon. The first one was the National Bureau of Agricultural Commodity and Food Standards (ACFS). They were established in October 2002 with the mission of protecting the benefits of trade on agricultural commodities and food products of Thailand as well as safety for consumers both in and out of Thailand. ACFS is assigned to be responsible for regulating the agricultural commodity and food standards. They seem to be making good progress for such a young agency. Many of the issues they have dealt with have to do with the seafood industry and pesticide residue issues in produce. Next I met with the Department of Agriculture Food Safety Division dealing with fresh fruits and vegetables. Their mission is very similar as they monitor food safety issues in exported products. 2004 was designated as the Year of Food Safety and they believe that there has been a lot of improvement since then. Both agencies are promoting Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) and HACCP. Tomorrow I get out of the city again, which I am looking forward to since I am not a city person.

Ayuthaya

This morning I was picked up for a tour of Ayuthaya. The bus first arrived at the Bang Pa-In Summer Palace, built during the Ayuthaya era. The palace is beautifully decorated in both traditional Chinese and European style. King Rama V traveled extensively and brought back many European influences to the Palace. Below is a picture of the Thai Pavilion, my favorite part of the palace, and a herd of elephant topiaries.

Next we arrived at Ayutthaya, the Ancient City, which was the former Thai capital for over 400 years. Nowadays the glory and the beauty of the grand palace and temples of its past has vanished, leaving merely a glimpse of ruins, despite this it is a good reflection of the past. We saw a combination of both the ruins and the remaining historical attractions.

We first stopped at Wat Maha That. Over 600 years old, Wat Maha That was the heart and soul of the Ayutthaya people. It was almost completely destroyed by the Burmese during the Thai-Burmese war. Below is a picture of the famous Buddha head inside the trunk and roots of a tree. After the Wat was damaged during the war it was looted and the heads of all of the Buddhas were stolen. Somehow this one was hidden under this tree and eventually became part of the tree. The second picture is of one of the few remaining Buddha statues with ruins in the background. There are many more pictures on the SnapFish site, just click the Fellowship Photos link on the right side of the page.

Our next stop was Wat Na Phra Mane. It remains in perfect condition, as it was used as the Burmese headquarters. The splendid Golden Buddha, dressed in regal attire, was placed in the temple along with the three thousand-year-old green stone carved Buddha. Both are considered as extremely valuable national relics. A picture of the Golden Buddha is below.

Our last stop in Ayuthaya was Wat Lokayasutharam. This Wat has a mysterious past, whereby its origins are unknown. The temple enshrines the Largest Reclining Buddha Image which was built during The early period of the Ayutthaya region. Two other ancient temples, as well as the ruined site also surround the compound area. Here is a photo of the reclining Buddha.

We next boarded a boat for our trip back to Bangkok. We were served a delicious buffet lunch. Throughout the journey I was able to watch the Chao Phraya River banks scenery and had a clear view of the life of the inhabitants that dwell along the river, and the unforgettable scenery of children as they greeted us as we went by, making it an altogether worthwhile experience.

Bangkok Sightseeing

My first stop of the day was Wat Pho Thai Massage School. I had heard that getting an authentic Thai massage is a must and this is the best place to do it. A one-hour full body massage only costs $12. The massage school is inside Wat Pho, the modest hero of Bangkok’s holy temples. Wat Pho features a host of superlatives: the largest reclining Buddha, the largest collection of Buddha images in Thailand and the country’s earliest center of public education – the massage school. The first picture below is the decoration above a doorway at the Wat, this is typical Thai ornamentation. The second picture is the head of the Reclining Buddha, which is absolutely huge.

My next stop was Phukhao Thong (Golden Mountain). The main attraction here is the view of Bangkok from the top of the hill the temple sits on which is pictured below.

Wat Benchamabophit or the Mable Temple came next. It is made from white Carrara marble and was built in the late 19th century. There were services going on while I was there and there is a picture of the monks below.

The Thais really love their King. He is 81 years old and the longest serving monarch in the world. Tomorrow is Coronation Day; a Public Holiday to celebrate the day he took the throne. There are pictures of him everywhere and I think they are always there not just for the holiday. See the example below.

Next I visited Wat Phra Kaew and the Grand Palace. This is a beautiful place. The pictures below are of yaksha (mythical giants) who guard the area. I think some areas of the palace were closed because tomorrow is Coronation Day which is one of the few days that the King still uses this palace; he lives in another palace now so this one can be enjoyed by the public.

My last stop for the day was Chatuchak Weekend Market, which may be the largest open air market in the world. It sells everything including food, pets, clothes, handicrafts, home décor, antiques, plants and anything else imaginable. This is a shopper’s and haggler’s paradise. I am not that big of a shopper and it is really humid here this time of year so I had had enough after a couple hours.

Hello, Bangkok!

I have arrived in Bangkok, Thailand. Today was a travel day, so I don’t have much to report. My accommodations here are very nice. I have a serviced apartment with a small kitchen and best of all I get to spend a whole week here before I have to pack up again. I think the longest I have stayed anywhere is three nights in a row. I feel like I have been in a perpetual state of motion but I wouldn’t have had it any other way because then I would have missed something. The trip has been wonderful so far and I am sure it will continue to be here. Tomorrow I plan to do some sightseeing. I am hoping that I can get a massage at Wat Po Thai Massage School, visit The Grand Palace and go to Chatuchak Weekend Market all in one day. Wish me luck on finding my way around. I will let you know how it goes.