CFG
04/03
Red Tractor Food
Assurance Schemes under the umbrella of Assured
Food Standards (AFS)
Background
Consumers generally believe that they are not given enough information
about their food in order to make properly informed choices.
They are increasingly interested in production methods and how their
food is produced. In addition to wanting food that is safe,
nutritious and cheap, many want food that has been produced with due
regard for the environment and to high animal welfare standards.
They want meaningful and useful information about all these aspects.
While assurance schemes should be able to play a part in providing
consumers with the information they want, their record to date has
been poor. The proliferation of a wide variety of schemes,
their weakness, and the often, inadequate accompanying information,
has served only to confuse consumers.
Recommendations:
- Foodaware strongly believes that food assurance schemes should
cover methods and practices that go beyond simple compliance with
existing laws on safety, environmental protection and animal welfare
etc. The standards on which they are based should be over
and above baseline legal requirements. This should apply
to any revised Red Tractor Assurance scheme.
- There is a need for rationalisation and for improvements in
how assurance schemes are operated and governed. Critically,
the schemes must become more open and based on sound governance
principles if they are to build consumer confidence and credibility.
- We strongly urge that the new governing Board for AFS II be
structured in such a way to ensure its independence. In
particular it should have an independent chairperson. The
appointment procedures should be transparent and the interests
of all Board members should be declared in a public register.
- We support the idea of a code of practice for the good governance
of food assurance schemes that includes a commitment to involve
consumers in the design of schemes and to communicate the benefits
of schemes to consumers in plain English (‘Bamoozled,
baffled and bombarded: consumers’ views on voluntary food
labelling’ published by National Consumer Council 2003).
- Thus, to restore and ensure the long-term credibility of the
Red Tractor scheme in the eyes of consumers, consumer representation
needs to be concrete and meaningful - both in its development
and in its implementation.
- Consumers need to be confident that compliance with standards
is being effectively monitored and policed and that there are
penalties for non-compliance. Monitoring methods and results
should be transparent. For example, the scheme should publish
regular updates, including an Annual Report (available in hard
copy and on the web) reporting on membership figures, levels of
compliance, any changes to the standards and action taken where
breaches have been found, including naming specific companies.
- The actual meaning of the Red Tractor logo has been and continues
to be the cause for much confusion amongst consumers. For
example, many think it is only applied to British produce i.e.
a kind of country of origin mark. We believe, therefore,
that the new scheme should be marketed in a realistic and credible
way, aiming to communicate to consumers exactly what it does (and
does not) represent.
February 2003
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