Manfred Härtl awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class
Mr. Manfred Härtl, former chairman of the VDF, was awarded the Cross of Merit 1st Class of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by Federal President Christian Wulff at the suggestion of the Bavarian Prime Minister. The presentation took place in March 2011 by the Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann in Erlangen.
The VDF about Haertl:
Mr. Härtl has significantly shaped the work of the association for decades. The emergence and establishment of today's VDF as the central and strong branch representation of the meat industry is due to his incomparable voluntary commitment to the meat industry. For many years it has managed to unite the often very different interests of its members and to merge the predecessor associations into one strong association.
Manfred Härtl had been a member of the board since 1976 and from 1986 to 2007 chairman of the board of the Association of German Wholesale and Foreign Trade in Livestock and Meat (GAVF), which was renamed today's Association of the Meat Industry after its merger with the Federal Association of Mail Order Slaughterhouses (BdV). Mr. Härtl worked in the BdV from 1978 until it was merged with the GAVF and was its chairman from 1980 to 1995.
The Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior paid tribute to Manfred Härtl as follows:
Manfred Härtl (71) from Erlangen has been the managing partner since 1966 and has been responsible for the around 200 employees of the Uni-Contifleisch group of companies.
In more than 30 years of voluntary work on the board of the Association of the Meat Industry and its predecessor associations, he represented their interests well-founded and interdisciplinary and considered all fields of activity convincingly and balanced.
In addition, for many years he was a board member of the Federal Market Association for Livestock and Meat, the butchers' cooperative and the Fördergesellschaft für Fleischforschung e. V. For more than a decade he was Deputy Chairman of the Advisory Board of the Federal Office for Agriculture and Food.
He was also active on the supervisory boards of Vereinigte Tierversicherungsgesellschaft AG in Wiesbaden, the Central Marketing Society of German Agriculture and the Central Market and Price Reporting Office for more than ten years. His extensive commitment to the sales promotion fund of the German agriculture and food industry, first as a member of the board of directors and later as its deputy chairman, should also be emphasized.
Härtl is still the deputy chairman of Fleischprüfring Bayern e. V. As its co-founder, he has advocated efficient solutions for slaughter animal data collection, traceability and classification. His initiative to simplify and summarize the data and control results for farms led to the electronic slaughter data networking implemented as part of the Bavarian cluster initiative.
He has been a member of the University Council of the Weihenstephan University of Applied Sciences since 2007.
His entire voluntary work is aimed at improving the meat product, the production process and the marketing structures for the benefit of the industry, agricultural producers and consumers. Through credibility and consistent factual orientation, he was able to convince critics and win over skeptics for common goals.
In addition to his job-related field of activity, he set another outstanding example of civic engagement as a founding donor of the Erlangen Cultural Foundation.
Source: Erlangen / Bonn [ VDF / STMI ]
