Andrew Blenkiron

Would you like Andrew Blenkiron sacked from the board of Red Tractor for his insulting comments.

  • Yes

    Votes: 273 94.1%
  • No

    Votes: 17 5.9%

  • Total voters
    290

AIMS

Member
Trade
Location
UK
Given what has been mentioned above, is it surprising supermarkets don't really use RT much? Why would they saddle themselves with additional cost for a brand that isn't theirs and for which no premium can be applied?

The supermarkets sort of piggy back on it. In meat and poultry terms there are no brands in the supermarkets. It is all sold as own label. So the processor has put their RT logo onto the supermarkets own label pack. Some meat products are not supermarket own label but are brands such as within the sausage and bacon category such as Heck, Richmond, Denhay etc.. Here you may see the brand applying a Red Tractor logo should they be licensed. But for them it is all about their brand and not about Red Tractor.

Now there are some cases where Red Tractor does deliver market access. Such as within a scheme called Food for Life which operates within the School Meals market. But that's probably for another thread!
 

JP1

Member
Livestock Farmer
I read in the FW Mr Blenkiron claims he has a had a lot of people offering him "support" and agreeing with his views when he publicly called critics of the RT scheme's duplicitousness "backstabbers".

And seemingly anyone critical of him for calling out the flaws in the Red Tractor scheme are part of what is "undoubtedly bad" in the farming industry....

Funny how an employed rep of RT is presenting themselves as a victim having branding a whole swath of farmers backstabbers for pointing out glaring inconsistencies. Don't like his style at all, an apology for abusing critics of RT would have been reasonable...
IMG_5018.jpg
 

manhill

Member
If all the AG farming ‘news’ press dont start doing real journalism how long are these magazines going to continue? Their old school readers are falling by the way side and they are disconnected from the younger generation.

It’s the same as what’s happening with the main stream media - newspapers, BBC, ITV, SKY etc. People are fed up with biased reporting so just turn them off. Take the bbc for example who are loosing 500 people per day cancelling subscriptions. It’s now well over a million subscribers gone. If these people don’t report properly with zero views or marketing slants they won’t survive.
never thought I'd prefer to turn to an Arab channel for my news but A l Jazeera reporting is very good.
 

AIMS

Member
Trade
Location
UK
Don't think it's a question of sacking people. The full list of RT directors can be seen here:
ASSURED FOOD STANDARDS - Officers (free information from Companies House) (company-information.service.gov.uk)
Surely it should be about lobbying some of them to drive change. Remember, 50% of their income is derived from Farmers and you need to get your voice heard. the NFU has recently published it's 8 Principals for the Red Tractor:
  1. Continue to retain trust and support growth in the domestic market for British food.
  2. Provide an assurance platform for growth in the export market for British food and ensure high value exports have robust assurance supporting traceability claims.
  3. Retain its leading position on cost effective assurance and protect members from inspection and regulatory duplication. Any additional costs associated with implementing new standards should be supported with a clear and simple cost benefit analysis or business case.
  4. Be empowered to challenge duplicity within the marketplace and not facilitate the hypocrisy of buyers sourcing policies which undermines domestic standards.
  5. Seek to add value through segmentation and market differentiation where there is a need to deliver different value propositions to different markets, without inflating the core standard and eroding value to scheme members.
  6. Provide marketing choice for buyers. Scheme options, or bolt-ons, could provide competition for cost-effective or a more practicable alternative for brands and scheme members alike.
  7. Provide a viable but discretionary alternative to new or increasing regulatory burdens and it should deliver efficient. solutions in areas that are susceptible to regulatory burdens.
  8. Explore the opportunities for inspections to be driven by outcomes and data, and where possible reduce the burden of inspection and add value back to farmers.
Choose the ones you support are drive the directors towards delivering them
 

manhill

Member
Very true.
Everybody's griping about it and very few are doing anything. Nothing will change until we all resign en bloc.

I suggest everybody comes out on the first of April 2021.(for the record, I packed in years ago so I don't give a stuff). Come on you lot put your money where your mouth is.

Isn't it a pity there's no farmer's organisation or a union type of thing that could organise it for us??
:joyful::joyful:
 

digger64

Member
Don't think it's a question of sacking people. The full list of RT directors can be seen here:
ASSURED FOOD STANDARDS - Officers (free information from Companies House) (company-information.service.gov.uk)
Surely it should be about lobbying some of them to drive change. Remember, 50% of their income is derived from Farmers and you need to get your voice heard. the NFU has recently published it's 8 Principals for the Red Tractor:
  1. Continue to retain trust and support growth in the domestic market for British food.
  2. Provide an assurance platform for growth in the export market for British food and ensure high value exports have robust assurance supporting traceability claims.
  3. Retain its leading position on cost effective assurance and protect members from inspection and regulatory duplication. Any additional costs associated with implementing new standards should be supported with a clear and simple cost benefit analysis or business case.
  4. Be empowered to challenge duplicity within the marketplace and not facilitate the hypocrisy of buyers sourcing policies which undermines domestic standards.
  5. Seek to add value through segmentation and market differentiation where there is a need to deliver different value propositions to different markets, without inflating the core standard and eroding value to scheme members.
  6. Provide marketing choice for buyers. Scheme options, or bolt-ons, could provide competition for cost-effective or a more practicable alternative for brands and scheme members alike.
  7. Provide a viable but discretionary alternative to new or increasing regulatory burdens and it should deliver efficient. solutions in areas that are susceptible to regulatory burdens.
  8. Explore the opportunities for inspections to be driven by outcomes and data, and where possible reduce the burden of inspection and add value back to farmers.
Choose the ones you support are drive the directors towards delivering them
This is all very well but when a smaller, newer , poorer or someone renting their premise cant access the market place for their perfectly good produce without subscribing to a protection racket its pointless in fact its just a heap of **** . The market place will still be there .
Just typical NFU policy to support things that make life harder for those not in their clique whilst creating opportunities for themselves at the same time .
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
So, in markets where there are few links, namely processing for the supermarkets the price for a Red Tractor piece of meat or chicken is lower then it would be for say a restaurant where the product has passed through several links, all of whom have had to pay for inspection and licenses.

I don’t think I’ve ever known a restaurant use the Red Tractor logo ever.
 

Danllan

Member
Location
Sir Gar / Carms
Don't think it's a question of sacking people. The full list of RT directors can be seen here:
ASSURED FOOD STANDARDS - Officers (free information from Companies House) (company-information.service.gov.uk)
Surely it should be about lobbying some of them to drive change. Remember, 50% of their income is derived from Farmers and you need to get your voice heard. the NFU has recently published it's 8 Principals for the Red Tractor:
  1. Continue to retain trust and support growth in the domestic market for British food.
  2. Provide an assurance platform for growth in the export market for British food and ensure high value exports have robust assurance supporting traceability claims.
  3. Retain its leading position on cost effective assurance and protect members from inspection and regulatory duplication. Any additional costs associated with implementing new standards should be supported with a clear and simple cost benefit analysis or business case.
  4. Be empowered to challenge duplicity within the marketplace and not facilitate the hypocrisy of buyers sourcing policies which undermines domestic standards.
  5. Seek to add value through segmentation and market differentiation where there is a need to deliver different value propositions to different markets, without inflating the core standard and eroding value to scheme members.
  6. Provide marketing choice for buyers. Scheme options, or bolt-ons, could provide competition for cost-effective or a more practicable alternative for brands and scheme members alike.
  7. Provide a viable but discretionary alternative to new or increasing regulatory burdens and it should deliver efficient. solutions in areas that are susceptible to regulatory burdens.
  8. Explore the opportunities for inspections to be driven by outcomes and data, and where possible reduce the burden of inspection and add value back to farmers.
Choose the ones you support are drive the directors towards delivering them
I don't want be rude, but I'm sorry to write that in this instance it is unavoidable; because if you think that 'lobbying' unaccountable prigs with a vested interest in maintaining their unaccountability has achieved or will achieve anything, you're a bloody fool. We have only got decades of evidence of this.

Anyone with even a modicum of common sense - and self-respect - can draw the obvious conclusions. Bizarrely, the NFU does bring out the 'religious' aspect in some, i.e. they willingly surrender their critical faculties in deference to it; the rest of us see it for what it is: self-interested, self-perpetuating and ineffectual for most farmers.
 

traineefarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Mid Norfolk
Don't think it's a question of sacking people. The full list of RT directors can be seen here:
ASSURED FOOD STANDARDS - Officers (free information from Companies House) (company-information.service.gov.uk)
Surely it should be about lobbying some of them to drive change. Remember, 50% of their income is derived from Farmers and you need to get your voice heard. the NFU has recently published it's 8 Principals for the Red Tractor:
  1. Continue to retain trust and support growth in the domestic market for British food.
  2. Provide an assurance platform for growth in the export market for British food and ensure high value exports have robust assurance supporting traceability claims.
  3. Retain its leading position on cost effective assurance and protect members from inspection and regulatory duplication. Any additional costs associated with implementing new standards should be supported with a clear and simple cost benefit analysis or business case.
  4. Be empowered to challenge duplicity within the marketplace and not facilitate the hypocrisy of buyers sourcing policies which undermines domestic standards.
  5. Seek to add value through segmentation and market differentiation where there is a need to deliver different value propositions to different markets, without inflating the core standard and eroding value to scheme members.
  6. Provide marketing choice for buyers. Scheme options, or bolt-ons, could provide competition for cost-effective or a more practicable alternative for brands and scheme members alike.
  7. Provide a viable but discretionary alternative to new or increasing regulatory burdens and it should deliver efficient. solutions in areas that are susceptible to regulatory burdens.
  8. Explore the opportunities for inspections to be driven by outcomes and data, and where possible reduce the burden of inspection and add value back to farmers.
Choose the ones you support are drive the directors towards delivering them

Well that's all wonderfully utopian, sadly the current scheme fails on all points and I don't see any real drive from the NFU or RT farming "representatives" to enact any meaningful change.

Also without a viable alternative competing scheme or realistic marketing options for non-assured it's all meaningless.
 

Steevo

Member
Location
Gloucestershire
Don't think it's a question of sacking people. The full list of RT directors can be seen here:
ASSURED FOOD STANDARDS - Officers (free information from Companies House) (company-information.service.gov.uk)
Surely it should be about lobbying some of them to drive change. Remember, 50% of their income is derived from Farmers and you need to get your voice heard. the NFU has recently published it's 8 Principals for the Red Tractor:
  1. Continue to retain trust and support growth in the domestic market for British food.
  2. Provide an assurance platform for growth in the export market for British food and ensure high value exports have robust assurance supporting traceability claims.
  3. Retain its leading position on cost effective assurance and protect members from inspection and regulatory duplication. Any additional costs associated with implementing new standards should be supported with a clear and simple cost benefit analysis or business case.
  4. Be empowered to challenge duplicity within the marketplace and not facilitate the hypocrisy of buyers sourcing policies which undermines domestic standards.
  5. Seek to add value through segmentation and market differentiation where there is a need to deliver different value propositions to different markets, without inflating the core standard and eroding value to scheme members.
  6. Provide marketing choice for buyers. Scheme options, or bolt-ons, could provide competition for cost-effective or a more practicable alternative for brands and scheme members alike.
  7. Provide a viable but discretionary alternative to new or increasing regulatory burdens and it should deliver efficient. solutions in areas that are susceptible to regulatory burdens.
  8. Explore the opportunities for inspections to be driven by outcomes and data, and where possible reduce the burden of inspection and add value back to farmers.
Choose the ones you support are drive the directors towards delivering them

Anyone know why there are only three officers for Red Tractor Food Assurance compared to ASF?

 

traineefarmer

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Mid Norfolk
We managed to wangle our way onto one of the Red Tractor 'consultation' webinars. During this Jim Moseley gave a breakdown of their income.

They have 23 staff and 19 board members.

Total annual income is £4.5million of which 50% is from farmers, 45% is from Royalty Fees and 5% is from AHDB.

The Royalty fees are the post farm gate income they derive from licensing the use of their logo. For our members it means that an abattoir has to be inspected and then, if they wish to make a claim that what they are processing and then selling into the supply chain is RT then they have to be licensed to do this. The next link in the supply chain may be a cutting plant, they too would have to be inspected and undergo what is termed 'mass balance' in order that what they then sell on is RT. They too then have to buy a license and so on.

Some of the abattoirs are of course cutting plants and processors. They are in the main supplying the supermarkets so just need to be inspected and then apply for a license. In many cases these businesses won't necessarily have a RT inspection but will be assured under the BRC Global Standard. They will then submit this to RT and pay a fee based on throughput and become licensed for the RT and therefore able to use the RT logo on pack.

However, in the more complex supply chains such as those to high street butchers and point, the 'chain' will break because a link will choose not to be inspected and licensed and so, they can't then use the RT logo.

But here's the rub. Within the meat supply chain there is an assurance scheme called Red Tractor Assurance Meat and Poultry Processing Standard. Many cutting plants and catering butchers are inspected by 3rd party audit to this standard. You would have thought, if you were inspected to the standard that you'd be allowed to use the Red Tractor logo or to make a claim on invoice that what you were selling along the chain is Red Tractor. No. You too have to then buy a license to use the logo or to use the words 'Red Tractor' on invoice.

To our mind this is nonsense. Surely, if a businesses that is sitting in the middle of the supply chain and is assured to the Red Tractor Assurance Meat and Poultry Processing Standard isn't supplying the consumer, but simply processing and moving product down the supply chain, then they should be allowed to make a claim on invoice that what they are selling is Red Tractor. The last point in the chain, that point at which the meat or poultry becomes consumer facing, is surely the point at which those selling the product should have to buy a license.

By the way, to be the best of my knowledge, non of the multiple retailers hold a Red Tractor license. They are selling pre-packs and the license sits with the processors.

Thank you for explaining this. Many of us haver little idea how RT is treated beyond our own yard. From what you are saying, it seems to me that RT are killing their own (our) "brand" by milking it for royalties at every step.

I understand the need for processors, packers and retailer to be monitored to avoid misuse and misrepresentation of the RT brand (although this is still happening), but if RT is truly in the business of maximising market access for its members and their produce, penalising end users for promoting the brand isn't helping.

Maybe if RT wasted less if its income on London offices, self promoting national ads and pissing about with a logo that is underused, they could make the "brand" free to use, but with conditions on its placement and promotion to really enhance public recognition of it.
 

Clive

Staff Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Lichfield
The very idea they refer to ”red tractor“ as a brand highlights a complete lack of marketing understanding which is beyond concerning !

the “brand” is the product, Hovis, Homepride, Kellogg’s etc a Red Tractor logo is simply a assurance scheme such brands can use to add credibility to a product

RT can never be a “brand” unless they plan to manufacture and retail product called things like “Red Tractor bread” or “ red tractor cornflakes “ etc

Just a small point but I’m not sure a focus group would ever think putting something RED on food packages is a good idea ? In nature RED usually mean only one (very bad) thing !

Anyone know much about the background of staff at Red Tractor ? What are their previous successes that makes them so qualified to tell us how UK products should be marketed ? Same goes for the experts in NFU office ? What makes these farmers so qualified to map out the best route for UK Ag marketing ?
 
Last edited:

texelburger

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
Herefordshire
Don't think it's a question of sacking people. The full list of RT directors can be seen here:
ASSURED FOOD STANDARDS - Officers (free information from Companies House) (company-information.service.gov.uk)
Surely it should be about lobbying some of them to drive change. Remember, 50% of their income is derived from Farmers and you need to get your voice heard. the NFU has recently published it's 8 Principals for the Red Tractor:
  1. Continue to retain trust and support growth in the domestic market for British food.
  2. Provide an assurance platform for growth in the export market for British food and ensure high value exports have robust assurance supporting traceability claims.
  3. Retain its leading position on cost effective assurance and protect members from inspection and regulatory duplication. Any additional costs associated with implementing new standards should be supported with a clear and simple cost benefit analysis or business case.
  4. Be empowered to challenge duplicity within the marketplace and not facilitate the hypocrisy of buyers sourcing policies which undermines domestic standards.
  5. Seek to add value through segmentation and market differentiation where there is a need to deliver different value propositions to different markets, without inflating the core standard and eroding value to scheme members.
  6. Provide marketing choice for buyers. Scheme options, or bolt-ons, could provide competition for cost-effective or a more practicable alternative for brands and scheme members alike.
  7. Provide a viable but discretionary alternative to new or increasing regulatory burdens and it should deliver efficient. solutions in areas that are susceptible to regulatory burdens.
  8. Explore the opportunities for inspections to be driven by outcomes and data, and where possible reduce the burden of inspection and add value back to farmers.
Choose the ones you support are drive the directors towards delivering them
Number 4 is interesting,
Are some of the buyers/processors members of the NFU,if so,conflict of interest ?
Undermines domestic standards.....would that be non assured imported grain.Possibly meats,veg too
Number 6,
Should provide marketing choice for sellers too,surely?
 

AIMS

Member
Trade
Location
UK
The very idea they refer to ”red tractor“ as a brand highlights a complete lack of marketing understanding which is beyond concerning !

the “brand” is the product, Hovis, Homepride, Kellogg’s etc a Red Tractor logo is simply a assurance scheme such brands can use to add credibility to a product

RT can never be a “brand” unless they plan to manufacture and retail product called things like “Red Tractor bread” or “ red tractor cornflakes “ etc

Just a small point but I’m not sure a focus group would ever think putting something RED on food packages is a good idea ? In nature RED usually mean only one (very bad) thing !

Anyone know much about the background of staff at Red Tractor ? What are their previous successes that makes them so qualified to tell us how UK products should be marketed ? Same goes for the experts in NFU office ? What makes these farmers so qualified to map out the best route for UK Ag marketing ?
Red Tractor Staff | Red Tractor Assurance
Many of them are on linkedIn
Their Head of Marketing, Ricard Cattell - (39) Richard Cattell | LinkedIn has a BSc in Agriculture and Food Marketing from Aberwystwyth
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,286
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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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