At the National Farmers' Union in London last week, the chief executive of the Assured Food Standards (AFS) organisation, David Clarke, announced new scheme aiming to harmonise food standards in the UK.
The scheme, entitled 'Red Tractor Farm Assurance' is designed to help those in processing and manufacturing food jobs to navigate farm standards more easily, and will eventually involve the merging of other farm assurance logos into one, the Red Tractor logo.
Mr Clarke, explaining how the scheme will benefit both manufacturers and retailers, said that he believes the new scheme will ensure consistency throughout all sectors. Although the details of the standards themselves will remain the same for the most part, it is the universal use of common terminology that Mr Clarke is focusing on. As for previous farm assurance schemes, these will all be gradually renamed to be part of the unified Red Tractor family; the Assured Dairy Farms Scheme will now become Red Tractor Farm Assurance - Dairy, and so on.
The new scheme will start to come into effect immediately, with farmers and those in other relevant food jobs being issued with a manual by February, which will explain how they can meet industry standards in time for official inspections in April.
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