Red Tractor Farm Assurance schemes have been operating for well over a decade and are designed to make sure that good standards of animal health and welfare are achieved on UK livestock farms. Now an
independent report proves that standards deliver.
The report, ‘Does membership of Farm Assurance Schemes affect compliance with Animal Welfare Legislation and Codes’, was commissioned by Defra and completed by researchers at the University of Warwick. The research was based on five years worth of routine inspection data (covering 38,000 farm inspections) from Animal Health (the government inspection agency).
Researchers made a detailed statistical analysis to discover whether assured farms had a better level of compliance, the results were extremely positive. The difference between assured farms and those not in the schemes were significant, on average
compliance was twice as good for assured farms.
David Clarke, Chief Executive of the Red Tractor scheme said: “This research provides independent scientific evidence that the industry’s farm assurance schemes do exactly what they set out to do by improving the standards of compliance with animal welfare rules.
For consumers, the report shows that they really can
rely upon the Red Tractor mark which appears on billions of packs of meat, poultry and dairy products every year. The Red Tractor is not only a signpost to high standards of farming and safe food, but it is now a
proven indicator of good welfare compliance.
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