United Kingdom joined the European Union in 1973
Capital city:London
Population:61,113,205 (July 2009 est.).
Currency:Pound sterling
Language:English (main) / Welsh & Scottish
The UK, a leading trading power and financial center, is one of the quintet of trillion dollar economies of Western Europe. Over the past two decades, the government has greatly reduced public ownership and contained the growth of social welfare programs. Agriculture is intensive, highly Mechanized, and efficient by European standards, producing about 60% of food needs with less than 2% of the labor force. The UK has large coal, natural gas and oil resources, but its oil and natural gas reserves are declining and the UK became a net importer of energy in 2005; energy industries now contribute about 4% to GDP. Services, particularly banking, insurance, and business services, account by far for the largest proportion of GDP while industry continues to decline in importance. Since emerging from recession in 1992, Britain's economy enjoyed the longest period of expansion on record during which time growth outpaced most of Western Europe. The global economic slowdown, tight credit, and falling home prices, however, pushed Britain back into recession in the latter half of 2008 and prompted the Brown government to implement a number of new measures to stimulate the economy and stabilize the financial markets, these include part-nationalizing the banking system, cutting taxes, suspending public sector borrowing rules, and bringing forward public spending on capital projects. The Bank of England interest rate periodically coordinates moves with the European Central Bank, but Britain remains outside the European Economic and Monetary Union (EMU), and opinion polls show a majority of Britons oppose joining the euro.
GDP - composition by sector
agriculture: 1.3%
Industry: 24.2%
Services: 74.5% (2008 est.).
Source: CIA
Latest news on UK poultry
22 May 2012 - Students at City College hotel school at Norwich and goose producers are to work together in developing new recipes and in reviving an ancient Michaelmas tradition.
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16 May 2012 - Handles more birds, offers potential to run lines at higher speeds.
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16 May 2012 - Entries are invited for the 2012 Pfizer Poultry Trainee of the Year Awards with opportunity to win a £2000 training grant in career development.
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11 May 2012 - The health and welfare standards of Kelly Turkeys won an accolade in the 2012 Pig & Poultry Marketing Awards presented at the London Haymarket Hotel.
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10 May 2012 - TV chef Jamie Oliver and Moy Park, the UK's largest producer of chicken, have teamed up to develop higher welfare chicken products that will launch under the Jamie Oliver brand.
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10 May 2012 - A new ‘intelligent’ system which will automatically chlorinate and make drinking water safe for all animals has been launched.
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03 May 2012 - UK based animal nutrition business, Premier Nutrition, has signed an agreement with DongA One Corporation of South Korea, to provide technical support and animal feed supplements from its manufacturing base in Rugeley, Staffordshire.
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30 Apr 2012 - The Food Standards Agency is inviting tenders to carry out enhanced molecular-based surveillance and source attribution of campylobacter infections in the UK.
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30 Apr 2012 - Aviagen and Cherkizovo Group, Russia’s leading poultry meat producer and one of Aviagen’s key Russian customers, have completed a series of meetings at Aviagen’s European headquarters in Edinburgh in a move designed to share technical information and improve understanding of modern farming methods.
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26 Apr 2012 - One of the UK’s largest solar PV projects has been installed on a poultry enterprise in the Midlands, at a cost of £1.2m.
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19 Apr 2012 - Strengthening the technical team at Ufac-UK is Martin Smith, who has been appointed area business manager, Midlands.
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17 Apr 2012 - Plans have been unveiled to build giant poultry units in a small village in Shropshire, England to house nearly 150,000 chickens, the Shropshire Star reports.
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16 Apr 2012 - Exports of livestock products rose to £2.325* billion in 2011, an increase of 22% from 2010, according to data released by EBLEX and BPEX. In 2006, the first year following the resumption of beef exports, total livestock product exports represented only £1.032 billion.
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09 Apr 2012 - Scientists and food industry experts in the UK have launched a £20,000 research project which could shed new light on the way people recycle egg shells, saving the egg industry thousands of pounds each year.
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05 Apr 2012 - The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games has announced that only eggs from legal housing systems will be served at Olympic Games venues.
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05 Apr 2012 - Chicken has been named as a source of E. coli bacteria that is making its way into people and causing infections, a Canadian study suggests.
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30 Mar 2012 - Anpario, the agriculture additives business, formerly known as Kiotech International, has acquired Meriden Animal Health, suppliers of natural animal feed additives, for €4.94 million.
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28 Mar 2012 - UK supermarket chain, Morrisons, has dropped its GM-free feed requirement for poultry meat and eggs, as it looks towards strengthening its focus on sustainability.
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26 Mar 2012 - Eating quality is top priority for the FarmGate Hatcheries — one of the largest suppliers of poults to producers of the traditional Christmas turkey — according to managing director Paul Kelly.
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23 Mar 2012 - A chemical which lights up fireflies, developed by Cardiff University, Wales, UK, is being used to develop a device for detecting bacteria like Salmonella, E. coli and Listeria in contaminated food.
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