Health and safety
- Share best health and safety practice at every board meeting.
- Submit a paper to the NFU FFE (Food, Farming and Environment) Board on policy levers to reduce accidents in the agricultural sector.
- Regularly promote agri-mental health services.
Resilience and training
- Identify training opportunities to help farmers meet increasingly complex assurance and compliance standards.
- Work to ensure landlords recognise the importance of retaining and investing in dairy businesses.
- Ensure a favourable regulatory and investment environment.
- Engage with ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) targets within the banking and public sector.
- Drive productivity gains through better utilisation capture and recording of data.
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Driving environmental performance
- Develop and deliver an industry alternative to EPR (Environmental Permitting Regulations).
- Work across the value chain through the Dairy Roadmap to deliver the Pathways Report.
- Aim to improve EA compliance rates via training, advice and industry-led initiatives.
- Continue to develop the Board's position on wider methane mitigation practices.
- Ensure environmental payment schemes work for dairy businesses across England and Wales.
Fair dealings and producer representation
- Develop “The UK Dairy Code” to identify best practice and aid contractual negotiations between producers and processors.
- Prepare evidence and work with the ASCA (Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator) ahead of a review of FDOM regulations.
- Continue to engage with and support the ADPO (Association of Dairy Producer Organisations), DPOs (Dairy Producer Organisations), cooperative structures and other representation models to aid farmer collaboration.
- Lobby for the extension of the ASCA's powers to allow DPOs and other representative parties to raise formal complaints on behalf of producers.
Labour and skills
- Engage with young dairy farmers and the next generation groups across the sector.
- Work with the wider supply chain and current industry initiatives to highlight labour shortages in the sector and help develop and support recruitment, training and development opportunities.
- Continue to lobby for the inclusion of dairy workers in the Shortage Occupation List and allow businesses to sponsor workers from abroad.
- Continue to promote the sector as an accessible, inclusive and attractive industry to work in.
Animal health and welfare and disease management
- Work alongside APHA and Defra to help develop and deliver effective disease surveillance, management and eradication strategies and prepare for potential disease outbreaks.
- Emphasise and promote the importance of best practice biosecurity across the sector and within the NFU.
- Support the NFU bTB team to ensure TB policy and governance works with dairy farm businesses and enables the management and eradication of TB on farm.
- Respond to and lobby Defra on the AHW Pathway consultation and implementation.
Trade and exports
- Key ambition: To double the value of British dairy exports over the next 10 years and help meet growing global demand for dairy.
- UK-EU SPS agreement: Work with the NFU trade team to ensure the dairy sector’s concerns are highlighted in negotiations and during the transition period.
- The Dairy Export Taskforce: Work collaboratively across the supply chain to reduce barriers to trade and grow market access.
- Secure recognition of UK farming standards in FTAs and ensure future trade agreements benefit UK dairy.
Marketing, promotion and reputation
- Ensure farm assurance drives trust and consumption of dairy.
- Promote, market and showcase UK dairy farms and dairy nutrition.
- Work with and promote the organic sector to ensure it has a long-term, viable and profitable future.
- Support all milk sectors and celebrate the diverse range of production systems in Great Britain.
- Advocate on behalf of the industry, address reputational risks and promote best of British.
