Going without Red tractor Farm Assurance

[Monty]

What other assurance schemes are there?

Good question. Just had a quick google and I can only find red tractor and RSPCA freedom foods for non organic dairy. Think someone needs to start some new assurance schemes

 

[upnortheast]

got me seriously thinking is there any milk buyer out their that will take my milk without being farm assured?

We have circa 150 milk & cream customer. Shops, ice cream makers, resteraunts, coffee shops, bakeries.etc etc
Not once in 13 years have any of them asked about FA
So there`s your answer Mr Mellor, Get yourself a pastueriser, seperater & a van

 

[RobFZS]

Did you pass the inspection?

That year we did while telling him he was taking the pee when meadow foods was giving out 12p B price after they knocked the A litres down 10%, told them not to bother last time round as we'd sold most of the milking herd, reading on here it seems even more cumbersome and only making more money for the processor.

 

[William Mellor]

That year we did while telling him he was taking the pee when meadow foods was giving out 12p B price after they knocked the A litres down 10%, told them not to bother last time round as we'd sold most of the milking herd, reading on here it seems even more cumbersome and only making more money for the processor.

Sorry to hear that but expect there is a lot more that will be forced out of business because of RT FA

 

[More to life]

Will take the visit do the best you can ask the Auditor to help you with any non compliance issues you will be fine.

 

[jimmer]

If your cows aren't all lame and screwy , your parlour is up together and quality reflects it , and housing is half tidy , you will be fine
Your paperwork will be alright on the day , won't it ....

 

[betweenthelines]

You need approval from your local authority before you can sell milk, don't you?

That's a form of assurance scheme isn't it?

I suspect that if anyone were to challenge RT and similar schemes that add nothing to the LA appraisal, as a restrictive practice, they would win

Edited to add

It's FSA approval not Local Authority that's needed

 

[som farmer]

our last acoura inspector was awful, she had no idea of normal dairy farming, she expected every thing to be under 1 roof, built in the last 5 yrs, and thought anything else should be failed! we normally have very few problems with other inspections, this one would have closed us down with every thing she wanted us to do. I kept my mouth firmly closed until the end.... we then had to have a visit with her manager, funny thing, we had to do b-all and passed no problem.
whils't I agree with farm assurance totally, I feel it is now nothing more than a box ticking exercise, dream't up by office staff with no experience of farming in the real world, just adding more rules to justify their jobs, and to look good to milk processors, who wouldn't give a damn if milk was short!

 

[celtis man]

our last acoura inspector was awful, she had no idea of normal dairy farming, she expected every thing to be under 1 roof, built in the last 5 yrs, and thought anything else should be failed! we normally have very few problems with other inspections, this one would have closed us down with every thing she wanted us to do. I kept my mouth firmly closed until the end.... we then had to have a visit with her manager, funny thing, we had to do b-all and passed no problem.
whils't I agree with farm assurance totally, I feel it is now nothing more than a box ticking exercise, dream't up by office staff with no experience of farming in the real world, just adding more rules to justify their jobs, and to look good to milk processors, who wouldn't give a damn if milk was short!

H G ?

 

[William Mellor]

If your cows aren't all lame and screwy , your parlour is up together and quality reflects it , and housing is half tidy , you will be fine
Your paperwork will be alright on the day , won't it ....

From what I hear the inspector I have got coming is as strict as they get. Wanting to be prepared as I can be incase the worse happens and I tell him to shove it up his ar*s and f**k off and left without the milk being picked up.

 

[lazy farmer]

@William Mellor
I get the feeling you are doing exactly what I do in the run up to an inspection. get overly worked up about it fear the absolute worse and fear your inability to make the improvements in the allotted time.
the reality is of course no where near as bad,its just we can't see it at the time.
Mt only advice is don't overreact during the inspection it won't achieve anything.
good luck

 

[Agrispeed]

I was told by my inspector that you can't actually fail - or rather she had never known of anyone fail. They may give you things to fix though, but as long as you keep your call its happy days. I find if you chat to them and explain why you do things the way you do etc then they are fairly relaxed about it.

I'm organic and have to be RT too. Very similar inspections, can be done on the same (long) day. Silly.

 

[multi power]

What other assurance schemes are there?

There must be others, in fact there has to be others, red tractor don't allow once a day milking and people milking once a day are obviously assured t

 

[Agrispeed]

There must be others, in fact there has to be others, red tractor don't allow once a day milking and people milking once a day are obviously assured t

Never had a problem milking OAD with red tractor. Feed calves OAD fine too.

 

[Had enough.com]

I've come to realise that the more you mither the more they'll find as they know you'll sort their finicky finds, hence verifying their job. There's people whose places are sh1tholes who don't give a hoot who seem to fly through because the assessor knows nothing will get done. Maddening

 

[Tarw Coch]

@William Mellor
I get the feeling you are doing exactly what I do in the run up to an inspection. get overly worked up about it fear the absolute worse and fear your inability to make the improvements in the allotted time.
the reality is of course no where near as bad,its just we can't see it at the time.
Mt only advice is don't overreact during the inspection it won't achieve anything.
good luck

Looks like I’m not the only one who gets stressed at the prospect of a farm assurance inspection.

 

[upnortheast]

Edited to add

It's FSA approval not Local Authority that's needed

Yes EHO inspect on behalf of FSA
Difference is they look back at their previous notes.
"Nothing changed. Ok I`ll have a quick look at your records & be on my way. "
Also no new rules appear each year, which seems to be RT`s speciality

 

[cornishfarmer]

With the scarcity of food this winter people won’t care if red tractor or not. The quicker the NFU and red tractor pull this the better. With the environmental bods getting bigger and more powerful the less animals will be on ground the more chance of this happening

 

[Tarw Coch]

With the scarcity of food this winter people won’t care if red tractor or not. The quicker the NFU and red tractor pull this the better. With the environmental bods getting bigger and more powerful the less animals will be on ground the more chance of this happening

The only food scarcity this winter will be feeed for livestock, there will be plenty of food in the shops, it will be imported from somewhere, shoppers won't worry about red tractor although they may well complain about rising food prices.
Farm assurance ain’t going away and the NFU certainly won’t be calling for it to be ditched, they back it to the hilt.

 

[Davy]

Ive no issue with the physical stuff around the yard. It makes you go and fix the broken bar on the gate that you keep putting off and gets them jobs done. Its the never ending paperwork and new rules that appear every inspection. When you already have the information recorded but the inspector wants it written into his specific book or have slightly different table headings, its just petty and job justification. Last inspector here was spot on, but in the medicine record book where a batch of cows were recorded as dry cow therapy, he wanted me to write DCT in every box rather than simply at the top of the table. Pedantic, and he knew it.