Red Tractor review ? How ?

[DrWazzock]

For my latest RT inspection as a wheat grower I even had to do include a risk assessment for public footpaths across the farm. Over reach and gold plating. Nothing to do with food safety. Where will it end if it carries on like this?

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

I’m one step ahead of you there!
I was automatically assuming that they wouldn’t be needing any of that for imported food, just like the millers don’t for imported grain!

As you know, livestock bought out of markets get the magic sticker too.

Marvellous really.

 

[T C]

WLA will not work in practice for starters!

Also if they introduced it then it would drive thousands of small cattle farmers out of business overnight!

Would not work because if for any reason a farm got suspended/ did not renew as they were ill/ personal problems for example then non of their stock could ever be sold as assured which would then mean they would have to cull all their breeding stock and replace it with assured cows/ ewes etc if they wanted/ had to become assured again!

WLA is just a licence to farm, nothing more nothing less!

Subs are gone, store cattle prices down here are now very poor, carry on with your mission of increasing costs/ red tape/ stress on farmers but before long many farmers will quit the industry with no one to replace them and then what!

All Scottish Beef and lamb is WLA. There was a legal challenge maybe 15 years ago by a scottish farmer who said that 90 days residency did not make it Scottish. I agree with that.
The problem is that RT beef and lamb does not command a premium and would appear not to restrict markets so the whole thing is a waste of time / money.
The issue is for RT to get a premium over imports something it has show unable to do.

 

[soapsud]

Possibly yes sorry I'm not sure who was banging on about this b4 lol

No probs. I was going on about LAs and funding on page 8 or so. @Hindsight is an agent who has a feel for bureaucratic paperwork. I'm just a shepherd who doesn't know his place.

 

[Hindsight]

We have had local authority audits for years at a frequency commensurate with their findings. That’s to say if they find nothing wrong they know they don’t need to visit very often. Yes it’s taxpayer funded but as I’ve said infrequent so hardly a big cost and you start asking what we pay taxes for if they are going to charge for everything.
Contrast that with the annual RT inquisition which happens in an annual basis and has found only one non conformance here in the last 30 or so years. £250 per annual. £7500 for very little benefit and a lot of unnecessary grief doing what local authority does on an as required basis.
But as ever predictions of doom if we dare to step out of the line imposed by the corporates.

Maybe infrequent Dr W but once RT has gone then it might become more frequent and if so I would expect the councils to see a cost and start to ask for whose benefit is the inspection. As for not a big cost and if taxes paid what will be charged - then look forward to the future - unless it passed you by Nottinghamshire County Council is the latest council to declare bankruptcy. The mess of local government finance due to years of Tory austerity is catching up. I should be amazed if these sort of visits to check farms have to become more frequent or more premises visited as RT has gone local councils do not look to recover some if not all the cost. We shall see. From your posts over the years I thought you would be the first to say no such thing as a free lunch?!

 

[Bury the Trash]

once RT has gone then it might become more frequent

it doesn't , established fact .
but hey thats just the sort of bullyboy tactic those RT geezers would use so i can see you are right on PC with them .
a typical paper workers/ advisors / consultants stance, someone earning money out of the fabricated periphery of the real job.

when inspectors consutance and clever talkers rule the roost , its become a sad old Country that's for sure.

 

[Hindsight]

it doesn't , established fact .
but hey thats just the sort of bullyboy tactic those RT geezers would use so i can see you are right on PC with them .
a typical paper workers/ advisors / consultants stance.

Suppose so. Time will tell. No skin off my nose.

 

[Bury the Trash]

Suppose so. Time will tell. No skin off my nose.

Time will show that with the demise of Subsidy , farmers will have less and less patience and tolerance of money spent on wasteful 'additions'

The wind of change has started to blow..

example as seen here with farmer in cloak

 

[Andy Nash]

As you know, livestock bought out of markets get the magic sticker too.

Marvellous really.

You couldn’t make it up… but oh… somebody did didn’t they….

 

[DrWazzock]

Maybe infrequent Dr W but once RT has gone then it might become more frequent and if so I would expect the councils to see a cost and start to ask for whose benefit is the inspection. As for not a big cost and if taxes paid what will be charged - then look forward to the future - unless it passed you by Nottinghamshire County Council is the latest council to declare bankruptcy. The mess of local government finance due to years of Tory austerity is catching up. I should be amazed if these sort of visits to check farms have to become more frequent or more premises visited as RT has gone local councils do not look to recover some if not all the cost. We shall see. From your posts over the years I thought you would be the first to say no such thing as a free lunch?!

I can see your argument to some extent. A lot would depend on the charge and the likely frequency. But I think it’s about risk and keeping monitoring proportionate to that risk. What’s the risk of people getting seriously ill due to a load of unassured wheat going into an animal feed mill or ethanol plant? Negligible I’d say. Which is why TA only make occasional inspections. Ergot or mycotoxins are probably the biggest risk but are picked up by intake sampling. RT doesn’t really help much there. If RT had stayed on track I wouldn’t mind so much but to add in lots of “trip you up” requirements that are often subjective and open to the inpectors intrepetation.
But back to your initial point about local authorities charging for services. Where will it end? A bill from the police for investigating a burglary? Generally I’m uneasy about the continual transfer of monitoring and auditing to the private sector with all the self interest and abuses that could entail. RT is a prime example of what can go wrong. Would you be happy if BASIS was funded and managed by a consortium of big agrochemical suppliers who decided who should be allowed continuing registration and who shouldn’t and what the registration criteria might be?
Not sure about my general ethos but personally I think that regulatory authorities should be at a very large distance from those who stand to benefit from the way they work. For me LA inspectorate are a truly third party body who operate in accordance with the requirements of the law not what customers think the law ought to include. There’s a big difference.

 

[Humble Village Farmer]

I would expect the councils to see a cost and start to ask for whose benefit

Local councils are inspecting food premises all the time. Bakers, coffee shops, cafes and restaurants; even supermarkets aren't above the law. It's all part of the service and for the public good.

Neither will councils inspect more frequently than they consider necessary.

 

[DrWazzock]

And going back to my pet example : Annual MOT of sprayers required by RT.
U.K. legal requirement is once every three years.
Cynical me says that RT insist on more frequent testing to benefit the spin off testing industry that hangs on RT coat tails.
I’d rather we had to comply with the clear legal requirement for a test every three years. We are all clear where we stand with that. It can tried in a court of law, not in kangaroo court made up of our customers, RT, and their associate beneficiaries of this OTT rule they invented for their not our benefit.

 

[DrWazzock]

It’s an aside but in the same vein I have serious reservations about the “Checkatrade” concept. Yet again a private profit driven concern is trying to get a hold in a market and cream off the small business by manipulating markets. This kind of thing should be illegal in my view. Only impartial local authorities should have the power to rate businesses. Any commercially driven approval body cannot escape malign motivatiin to increase their own take by abusing their position and building a power base.

 

[DrWazzock]

That’s what RT is really. A kangaroo court. No basis in law yet has appointed itself judge jury and executioner of your business's ability to access most markets, particularly for combinable crops. How have we arrived at this state of affairs? It’s a serious breach of free markets and civil liberties in my view to have a quasi judiciary operating in this manner. Down with that kind of thing. I rest my case.

 

[onthehoof]

Cousin is a pest controller, big move now to ban poison bait altogether and use live traps for rats and mice, some companies he works for are already specifying it

 

[DrWazzock]

The determination of whether a product is fit for sale should depend only on U.K. law.
If buyers require additional criteria to be met, and they are perfectly free to do so, then they should identify and pay a clearly defined premium over base U.K. price/ price of unassured imports.
Any market manipulation by trade assurance schemes or otherwise to obtain a premium product at the same price as base price should be illegal or at least against some kind of code of conduct.
Put simply, RT assured wheat price should be something like £5 a tonne over grain market base price. Then let’s see who is willing to put their money where their mouth is.

 

[DrWazzock]

I suppose one form of protest possible by assured growers is to ask for £5 a tonne above whatever we are offered in order to pay for RT. If we refused to sell unless we got the £5 premium then it might send a message. Obviously we could only do it for so long but it might at least be educational. The contract asks for RT so please show me the premium over imports. In fact AHDB ought to be publishing two prices. Assured and unassured so we all know what a good thing assurance is. They’d be serving a purpose then.

 

[Drillman]

Cousin is a pest controller, big move now to ban poison bait altogether and use live traps for rats and mice, some companies he works for are already specifying it

I was talking to a council pest control chap the other day and he told me rt and the council are having a ding dong over methods used. I said don’t worry I won’t stand for rt nonsense so crack on here with poison.

 

[willyorkshire]

if only he actually understood the. NFU / BRC involvement in this properly it could have been a lot better

Give him a call Clive. Educate him. I mean it!

 

[Raider112]

My preferred option is to have a standard that producers are proud of and shows a premium.

A noble aim but at the moment we have a standard that producers are absolutely peed off with and has never, and never will, show a premium.