In the second issue, James Brosnan of Volac would write about


Protected Fat and ask ‘Will it protect dairy compound sales?’ while there was also a report on the Nottingham Nutrition Conference (remember that?) held from 4-6 January 1981. Later in the year, coverage switched to the Holmen Feed Production Symposium, which in those days was held annually in September at the Heathrow Penta Hotel. In the March issue Geoff Hall would provide an ‘Appreciation of


Palatability Agents’ while David Williams would write about Medicinal Feed Additives (a recurring theme of many articles in those early issues) while the new ‘Screenings’ by Gleaner column would warmly welcome Roger Dean to the position of Deputy Director General at UKASTA (replacing you know who!) Roger would later leave that role to start a new agricultural consultancy, after which he was approached by Howard to see if he would consider writing for Feed Compounder; Roger agreed, and has now been contributing to every issue for over 30 years. Other authors in 1981 included Peter Wilson (who would later


become Professor of Agriculture at Edinburgh University while I was studying there) and, in April, Jane Mounsey put in an appearance with her first ever Out & About article, reporting on a visit to J.E. Hemmings & Son Ltd, in Warwickshire (a mill which has long since disappeared and been covered over with housing). Other notable names featuring in early issues are Michael Putnam of what was then Roche Products Ltd, Brian Rutherford of BOCM Silcock Ltd and Sam Foye of the Society of Feed Technologists; Peter Walker, Minister of Agriculture, is pictured at the opening of the BOCM Silcock Ltd Penrith mill. The Statistics column in the May 1981 issue shows total UK compound feed production at 11 million tonnes, down nearly 5 per cent on 1979 although higher than the total produced in 1978 and 1977. Trying to put a brave face on things, Gleaner rejoices in his column that production in GB in February 1981 is ‘only’ down 3 per cent on the previous year, in contrast to the 10% annual reduction witnessed in January! Another aspect which catches the eye is the publication of CAP


prices for 1981/82, showing prices which were agreed by the Council of Ministers for the main commodities like cereals, milk and meat. And, in an indication of how much some things change and yet stay the same, the issue of Europe was once more front and central of Howard’s Opinion column in September. The specific subject was the potential implications, following a vote at the Labour Party’s 1980 Conference, that the National Executive had published a paper stating categorically


that the British people would have a straightforward choice at the next General Election: vote Labour and take Britain out of the EEC or vote Conservative and keep Britain in. Editor’s Notebook made its first ever appearance in that same


edition and was to remain a fixture until 2018. The Buyers’ Guide section, which remains ever-present to this day, first featured in the December 1981 issue. Advertisers in 1981 include some companies which remain familiar:


two from the very first issues have supported this anniversary piece – a big thank you to United Molasses and to Kemin. BASF had regular full page full colour adverts, sometimes even taking a double page spread. Frank Wright (nowadays regular advertisers as Trouw Nutrition, which is today part of the Nutreco Group, and was at one stage owned by BASF) had the first ever inside back cover. Roche Products (who would later buy Colborn Dawes Nutrition, today part of DSM, and one of our best ongoing supporters) had the inside front. But so many other names of suppliers and compounders have disappeared: Alvan Blanch, BP Nutrition, Feed Mill Machinery Ltd, Milltech Ltd, T.A. Shore Ltd, Tecator Ltd are just some of those from the January issue alone. The biggest category of advertisers from the early days, which for a long time now and for a very obvious reason has completely disappeared, is suppliers of growth promoters: Elanco, Cyanamid, May & Baker, Salsbury Laboratories, Albac and so on. There was a far greater number of UK suppliers of mill plant and equipment as well, while it’s clear that supply of feed in bags was much more prominent in the 1980s than it is today. The other thing which almost all the advertisements flag up is how


much methods of communication have changed. Postal addresses, landline telephone numbers, and telex were the order of the day. Fax had yet to come (and go). Of course, there were no websites, e-mails, Facebook or Twitter accounts. Mobiles and Zoom calls would have been familiar to readers in those days only as fictional futuristic concepts represented on episodes of Star Trek, not as everyday tools of business. Howard died just over three years ago at


the age of 86 while Jane still lives in Derbyshire. Fiona and I have continued to publish the magazine, and while fundamentally the end- product is the same today as it was back in 1981 when it all started, much has changed in how it is put together. In 1987, when I joined the business, I would not infrequently return home to be told I had bits of Letraset stuck to my forehead, the product of creating headlines or graphs using large sheets of greaseproof paper holding dry transfer letters and lines. Cow gum and Pritt stick were also essential tools of the trade, while press releases and articles had to be received in hard copy, edited by pen marks on the paper (spelling mistakes corrected; excessively commercial blurb crossed out; use of italics, bold face, capital letters, font style, size, leading, column width etc described by mysterious hieroglyphics known as ‘printers’ marks’). These would be sent to the printer, transcribed, returned as ‘galley proofs’, which had to be cut up and stuck on to make-


Fiona Mounsey


Left: Three generations of the editorial side of Feed Compounder (l to r) Howard, Ryan and Andrew Mounsey


PAGE 32 JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2021 FEED COMPOUNDER


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