Bord Bia rolling out a ‘remote’ system for farm audits

Farmers will upload details online for phone audits as work begins on clearing backlog of 15,000 dairy and beef QA inspections

SCHEDULING of remote farm audits for Bord Bia’s dairy and beef quality assurance schemes will start this week.

Letters, audit guidelines and checklists are to be sent to around 2,500 farmers over the coming days as Bord Bia starts to tackle a backlog of 15,000 audits that have built up for the SDAS and SBLAS.

Bord Bia was forced to suspend on-farm inspections for the SDAS and SBLAS in March due to the Covid-19 pandemic and thousands of farmers have had their certifications extended as a consequence.

However, it has devised a remote audit system which has been trialled over the last few weeks and is now ready to be put into operation.

The Farming Independent understands that Bord Bia has completed training auditors to carry out remote audits and is ready to roll out the system. The remote audit involves farmers uploading information and photos using a pre-audit information upload system.

For beef farmers this includes photos of all animal housing, the silage storage area, livestock, the cattle crush and animal handling facilities, the medicine cabinet and herd register.

In the case of dairy farmers photographs are also required of the bulk tank and dairy, the milking parlour, milking equipment including jars and clusters and the collection yard.

A time is agreed ahead of the remote audit for the auditor to contact the farmer, and the audit is then carried out over the phone.

The audit will include an assessment of the pre-audit information provided, an evaluation of key procedures and records, and an appraisal of specific concerns identified in the data provided by the farmer.

Around 40 audits were initially completed in trials by Bord Bia, with the feedback resulting to slight changes to the operating procedures.

Overall, however, the trials are reported to have gone well, with Bord Bia stating that the quality of photos provided by farmers had been excellent.

It is understood that the 2,500 farmers who are to be audited in the first tranche include those with the most imminent cert expiry dates for quality assurance schemes.

“We will continue to monitor expiry dates for the remainder of these farmers and apply extensions where necessary and where we can still do so within the limits of our own policies and procedures,” stated Bord Bia.