Who is Who?

Standardizing Terminology in Animal Health Business

When the immortal Chinese philosopher Confucius was asked; What shall you do if you became the Emperor someday? he replied with his inspiring statement; I shall standardize the meaning of words and terms! In animal health business, we all face a repeated problem of confusing terms and usage of words. For instance, who is the end-user of an animal health product? Biologically it is the bird or the animal. Nonetheless, the last sane user is the producer. Then, can a feed mill be considered as end-user or not? The mill sells feed to producers, therefore it is not the last hand. However, the products sold to a feed mill will not be sold unchanged! It will be sold as an ingredient of feed, thence the feed mill was the last handling station of the unchanged product! So, shall we consider it an end-user or not? This confusing nature of the term makes it of good sense to avoid it completely. I have met people who consider the retailer selling to producer as an end-user!

Hereunder, I tried to frame my minor contribution toward standardized animal health terminology. Such a simple process that will essentially increase the value of databases and improve perceptual capacity of all of us understanding each other in presentations, papers and researches. All readers’ contributions are surely more than welcome in this regard

N.B. When it comes to capacities and customers classification from its perspective, the no. here are intended to describe the case of Egypt only.

Poultry Industry

• KOL: Key Opinion Leader is defined as any customer of scientific or practical status perceived by other customers to be qualifying for a reference role in the industry. Accordingly his practice affects other customers’ behavior toward a product. Scientific status is usually linked to university professors and experienced field practitioners. We prefer the term KOL more than the currently used term i.e. Key Consultants. Mainly because and KOL can sometimes be an agriculture engineer or a resident vet in one of the key accounts, in these cases the term "consultant" does not apply
• Prescriber: Field practitioner vets, vet consultants, vet labs or any other individual who possess the capacity to prescribe animal health products to producers.
• Wholesaler: Commercial entity buying the product with the intention of reselling it unchanged to other commercial entities (to retailers). We prefer the term wholesaler more than the term distributor to avoid confusion with agents directly authorized by manufacturers as distributors. Also because distributionship requires a structure and facilities that most of the wholesalers will come short to.
• Retailers: Commercial entity buying the product with the intention of reselling it unchanged to producers.
• Feed mills: producers of mashed feed at industrial scale i.e. feeding more than 20 tons/day
• Pelleting Factories: Producers of pelleted and / or crumbled feed.
• Hatchery: Hatching facilities with automated incubator and hatcher i.e. Native primitive hatchery excluded
• Key Accounts: poultry producers holding one or more of four qualities:
  1. Capacity represents ≥ 2% of its sector
  2. Fully or partially integrated = multi-stage production
  3. Reference role among other producers
  4. Hub of a coordinated production cluster
• Medium Sized Poultry Producer: Capacity ≥ 100,000 Broiler Birds/ Cycle
• Poultry Small Holder: Capacity > 30,000 <>
• Medium Sized Layers Project: Capacity ≥ 2,000,000 eggs/ annum
• Small Layers Project: Capacity > 500,000 <>

Livestock Industry

• KOL: vide supra
• Prescriber: vide supra
• Distributor: vide supra
• Retailers: vide supra
• Feed mills: vide supra
• Key Accounts: Farming projects holding one or both of two qualities:
  1. Capacity represents ≥ 0.1% of its sector
  2. Reference role among other dairy or beef farming projects
• Medium Sized Beef Farming Project: Holding ≥ 300 heads
• Small Beef Farming Project: Holding ≥ 100 <>
• Medium Sized Dairy Project: Milk production ≥ 300 Liters/ Day

Copyrights© 2008. Eyad Harfoush