Red Tractor Pigs Board chairman Stewart Houston explains the workings of the assurance body and how it benefits farmers.
I was pleased to be able to chat with so many of you in the two sessions on farm assurance we shared with RSPCA Assured at the British Pig and Poultry Fair.
It struck me, though, that some of the younger farmers weren’t sure about the breadth of work that Red Tractor is involved with.
A number of farm assurance bodies, including Farm Assured Beef and Lamb and Assured British Pigs and more, were set up to counter the bad news abounding at the end of the 1990s, when BSE, salmonella, pesticides and foot-and-mouth were never far from the headlines.
But the NFU and others had the foresight to bring them all together under the Red Tractor banner and began to combine and develop standards for the whole food chain.
And here we are, 24 years later, still doing the same job that ensures our shoppers trust UK-produced food more than any other.
Specialist staff
Red Tractor runs with a relatively small staff for the ground it covers, and a fair number have practical farming experience through family connections or previous jobs, with many seen as specialists.
The Pigs Board, made up of farmers, vets, processors and retailers, is at the heart of standards development.
The nitty gritty of the wording of the standards and the guidance is done by the independently chaired Technical Advisory Committee (TAC), overseen by a sector technical manager.
The TAC is populated by experts from the various representative bodies, who must balance the needs of all of the actors in the chain.
Once developed, new standards go out for scrutiny by farmers, and are modified in line with the comments we receive, before being signed off by the Standards Committee and main Red Tractor Board.
Comprehensive process
It’s a comprehensive process to ensure what we do is for the benefit of the industry as a whole and it is all about boosting the confidence of the end purchaser, whether they are buying from the top tier or more economically priced product.
I know how much pig farmers look forward (not!) to their annual inspection by our independent certification bodies, but that’s not all we do.
Abattoirs, processors, packers, livestock transporters, cutting plants, markets and collection centres are all inspected to a set of standards. They also have to be licensed and pay to use the Red Tractor logo.
That income, which amounts to some £3.75m, is used to fund the marketing campaigns you see in magazines and on TV, hopefully adding value to your bottom line.
Working with certification bodies and others, our compliance team orchestrates inspections of the paperwork and use of the logo in all of these premises and, in the same way that they do on farm, they pick up on non-conformances and see that they are rectified.
And, again, in the same way as farm assurance, if the non-conformances are major, persistent or are not closed out, they can forfeit their right to use the logo.
I know farmers sometimes think they are the main focus of the auditing process, but I’ve tried to demonstrate the benefit of assurance to the whole supply chain.
My old colleague at BPEX and AHDB, Mick Sloyan, always used to say: “Say what you are going to do, do it, then prove you’ve done it.”
And that’s just what Red Tractor does for consumer confidence on your behalf.