Preface

On the afternoon of October 10, ahead of the 2023 World Agri-Food Innovation Conference, Wellhope’s Chairman Jin Weidong took part in the “WAFI Leaders’ Dialogue.” He exchanged views on agricultural science and technology innovation with Professor Fan Shenggen, Dean of the Academy of Global Food Economics and Policy at China Agricultural University and Board Member of CGIAR; Ms. Diane Holdorf, Executive Vice President of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD); and Mr. Song Weiping, President of Dabeinong Group. The dialogue was conducted entirely in English. Below is the full text of Chairman Jin’s remarks.

Thank you professor Fan,

Thanks for your excellent speech Ms. Holdorf and Mr. Song,

Good afternoon everyone.

I'm honored to participate in today's dialogue.

I am Jin Weidong, founder and Chairman of Wellhope Foods Co., Ltd.，a Chinese food and agriculture company. We have started the business since 1995 and were initially a leading feed company. Then we started our food business ten years ago and are now Asia's largest integrated broiler company, producing 2.5 million tons of chicken meat per year, as well as pork, duck and rabbit meat. Wellhope places great emphasis on efficiency, quality and safety in the food production process. These are the three key points we are most concerned about. Without efficiency there is no competitive advantage. We developed the broiler business from scratch and became the No. 1 in our country. The most basic reason is that Wellhope is an efficient company. This efficiency can be expressed in the feed conversion rate, in EEI(European Efficiency Index), in mortality and economically in the return on investment. However, as new regulations become stricter, and as consumer demands increase, we have to change our development from the traditional way that focuses only on efficiency to the way that pay more attention to the quality and safety of products. We also need to differentiate ourselves from competitors to make our products stand out. Recently we have started to look into animal welfare.

R&D is the basic means of innovation for Wellhope. We pay great attention to innovation. New products are not only developed in the laboratory and verified in the testing farm, but also demonstrated in the market. We also focus on accelerating the practical application of R&D outcomes. A good example is that in China, Wellhope is one year ahead of the peer companies to realize antibiotics-free in broiler feed. Through vaccination, improved environmental hygiene, enhanced biosecurity control and feed nutrition, Wellhope's broilers have a low mortality. 42-day-old birds have an average body weight of 3.0 kilograms, and the EEI is generally over 460, an impressive result in our industry. This was achieved without the use of antibiotics.

I hope through the World Agrifood Innovation Conference, we can gain more information and learn more about broiler production practices in advanced countries, especially new technologies for broiler production after the ban of antibiotics. We're also interested in new technologies for efficient broiler production under animal welfare standards, and we are looking forward to sharing Wellhope's experiences in chicken meat processing, and market information.

I'm invited to give a keynote speech at the World Agrifood Innovation Conference in Beijing next month. I will talk about Wellhope's practice of rapid growth in the broiler business over the past decade or so, especially of improving efficiency and innovation. I hope it will be helpful to all participants.