The Seeker
Member
Ask the average shopper if they looked at the red tractor logo when they picked up there - insert product here- 9 out of 10 wouldn’t even know what you are on about.
Dispatches - Red Tractor
- Thread starter Clive
- Start date
The Seeker
Member
The only part of the labelling most will read is £ Start - end ….. that and how much packaging the product has, ofcourse more being better 
Happy at it
Member
- Location
- NI
That's the problem, by setting themselves up to be the benchmark of exemplary standards they are doing the industry no favours. Undoubtedly some assurance is necessary but for many good farmers the concept of farming red tractor inspection standard ready 365 days a year is not practically or financially possible.
Its maddening when setting these standards for the livestock sector only serves to put greater pressure on the smaller family farms, that are used when supermarkets are marketing the produce to their consumers.
Because the Executive and President insist on it. Work against RT in the NFU at your peril.
Bulls eyeAgreed the question still stands but I think it's a 'toptable' decision not a grass roots one ....
Any way Thatchers at the ready for tonight..the next half hr !!
Prez safeguarding that visit to the Palace...?
I think she is aiming for the “other place”
Better "long term" benefits I guess....I think she is aiming for the “other place”
As a point of fact, I have made no comments or likes on the thread you mention and I certainly do not condone anyone reducing a woman to tears.
What does annoy me is repeated posts tarring fellow TFF members.
You had made your point. It was getting boring
- Location
- Yorks
Haha, yes, you're probably right.I suspect that, if they were to do a program on RT, it would concentrate on the group of farmers that are trying to undermine their exemplary standards.
There's a difference though between "undermining standards" and suggesting EQUAL and consistent standards. And the valid point that you can't retrospectively correct a food safety breach (which is how RT's world leading 12 month audit system works).
Basically it's a quality mark for marketing purposes, structured like a protection racket, yet very very weak in its core claim to provide food assurance.
Food asurance that is so poor it's likely to damage the reputation of the very farmers who have no choice but to be members.
Dispatches is a good example. All commercial chicken growers are forced to be RT (ok, so there's freedom foods and a couple of others, but they all have similar weaknesses). Now all the RT farmers have a damaged reputation.
That said, Dispatches made out the standards on those farms were poor. It's easy for a TV programme to put any slant they want on a documentary. I imagine those farms try to look after those chickens to the best of their ability.
The problem probably lies with consumers/retailers wanting cheap chicken, and the farmer trying to find a way to provide that. The chicken pays for the wish for cheap food, and the other compromise might be antibiotic resistance.
But would 50 birds in a small hut make any difference? Would that use less antibiotics? Would less birds die? Or would it just look better, but be no better.
Plenty following her up with the same views. It is beyond predictable when on twitter and RT comes up. 99% of those who love it have some kind of NFU board or NFU/AHDB/red tractor ‘next generation’ type thing in their bio. Groupthink is so bad.
- Location
- Buckinghamshire
NO TO NFU AND RT AT LEAST.
They just want to keep the gravy train going
Daniel
Member
- Location
- Mildenhall, Suffolk
Has you invite to become an Oxford Farming Conference next generation future farming leader got lost in the post again?
Yes
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
I didn’t read that program as undermining RT particularly, although it won’t have helped the brand’s marketing image (such that it is?)
What I took from the program was an attack on ‘mega farms’, not that I saw anything particularly bad on view. The chickens looked healthy and the facilities tidy and in good order (unsurprisingly). They even made a comment at the beginning that antibiotic reduction had been so effective that there were half the number of resistant bacteria found in samples from intensive chickens than in organic ones, but noticed they didn’t dwell on that long.
There will be a few dead ones when they’re young in any system, and I did note they were keen to point out numbers rather than percentages. If there are 250k chickens on one site then even a tiny percentage will make for a big number. I was only surprised they didn’t manage to get an emotive picture of a thousand young chicks in a heap.
They seemed to be trying to make a thing of the guys being trained to humanely dispatch chicks too, but I’d be more concerned if they weren’t.
Intensive poultry production isn’t a job I’d particularly want to be involved in, but I didn’t see anything badly wrong in the units they showed. The system is a result of the demand for cheap food, with efficient factory farming the only way to get the prices so low.
- Location
- Montgomeryshire
On the Wye Valley pollution, any issues are surely down to the way the effluent & manure is used, not the fact that there are a lot of big chicken units there?
It’s also a big arable area, who would be using plenty of nutrients anyway. If some runoff is getting into the river then those spreading it need the criticism, not the poultry industry producing it. I suspect any poultry unit directly dribbling any effluent into watercourses would be reported so many times by those campaigners they’d have an EA visit straight away.
They clearly couldn’t find any cases though, so switched to some figures from somewhere in Devon, without mention of even when those figures came from.
It’s also a big arable area, who would be using plenty of nutrients anyway. If some runoff is getting into the river then those spreading it need the criticism, not the poultry industry producing it. I suspect any poultry unit directly dribbling any effluent into watercourses would be reported so many times by those campaigners they’d have an EA visit straight away.
They clearly couldn’t find any cases though, so switched to some figures from somewhere in Devon, without mention of even when those figures came from.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
Complete non story. Well designed and
run modern commercial poultry outfit. There isn’t a credible or better alternative to supply meat at the scale and price required.
A bit of desperate nit picking over some minor issues.
CND mug on the journos dining table told me everything.
What do RT add? Would it be run any differently if RT didn’t exist? I doubt it. Commercial targets tend to drive welfare and disease management, not an annual visit from an inspector. It’s the EA’s job to police the river, not RT’s job. Companies that produce chicken on that scale have veterinary expertise on hand way more knowledgeable than an RT inspector.
I suspect RT are just a bit of an irritation but provide a nice sticker.
run modern commercial poultry outfit. There isn’t a credible or better alternative to supply meat at the scale and price required.
A bit of desperate nit picking over some minor issues.
CND mug on the journos dining table told me everything.
What do RT add? Would it be run any differently if RT didn’t exist? I doubt it. Commercial targets tend to drive welfare and disease management, not an annual visit from an inspector. It’s the EA’s job to police the river, not RT’s job. Companies that produce chicken on that scale have veterinary expertise on hand way more knowledgeable than an RT inspector.
I suspect RT are just a bit of an irritation but provide a nice sticker.
- Location
- Lincolnshire
It was hatchet job on meat more than anything. In particular I noticed the catch 22 no win scenario they raised namely if you don’t use antibiotics you could have a welfare problem, if you do use them you create resistance.
Well blow me down but ain’t life just a series of compromises.
Well blow me down but ain’t life just a series of compromises.
I don’t think,they have a lot to do with it really - all the farmer officers in the NFU are just pawns for the full time paid staff a Stoneligh who are protecting their £ 21 mil a year existence,
The NFU’s has many none farmer members, retailers, processor, input suppliers etc. - how can any organisation successfully represent both sides of their membership without serious conflict of interest ?
They do as they are told to get elected into the next job and live in hope of New Years honours, they represent themselves imo far more than they do the average farner member
they made a mistake with mine ……. Think they realised within the first 30 mins of me being there
I got kicked out of their WhatsApp group for daring to say what I thought !
Future NFU leaders and AHDB illuminate are groomed / broken like a horse