Western Daily Press (Saturday)
Approval is a waste of our time and money
Bridgwater and West Somerset MP Ian Liddell-Grainger tells Defra Secretary Thérèse Coffey that the NFU’s planned overhaul of the Red Tractor scheme is long overdue.
DEAR Thérèse, As a farmer recently remarked to me, the Red Tractor is in fine shape. Apart from the fact that the engine is seized, the windscreen smashed and the tyres deflated.
Which pretty well summarises how fit for purpose this scheme has been since its ill-thought-out inception. In fact in all my dealings with farmers over the years I don’t believe I have heard a single favourable comment expressed about it. On which basis my advice to the NFU as it sets about overhauling the thing is not to bother. Just drag it to the breaker’s yard and start again.
The Red Tractor was dreamt up by marketing people who had clearly been over-promoted and should have stuck to something rather more within their grasp because as a marketing tool it has been an utter failure – except in the eyes of those who have been collecting handsome pay packets for running it.
It hasn’t stamped any form of brand identity on British farm produce – leaving aside the fact that because of EU rules it could legitimately have been applied to conforming imports – nor, more to the point, has it attracted any premium for the goods the logo adorns or, consequently, for farmers producing them. As was the intention, of course.
As for the aim of helping shoppers make informed choices when buying food, I doubt one in a hundred consumers has the faintest idea what it stands for.
Let us contrast this shambles with the French Red Label scheme which is a recognised quality mark and whose influence genuinely extends from the supermarket aisle back to the farm.
In return for a guaranteed premium, producers are locked into a rigid set of production controls covering everything from welfare to stocking densities and feeding regimes.
They are also liable to experience unannounced and often pre-dawn visits from inspectors with instant ejection from the scheme if any infringement – such as the use or even possession of unauthorised feed – is uncovered.
By contrast may I draw the court’s attention to the several cases of deficient animal welfare that have been brought before our courts involving farms over which the Red Tractor flag had been flying. They have merely hastened the devaluation of the entire exercise and for many farmers made Red Tractor accreditation an expensive and pointless waste of time and money.
Many of those farmers indeed will welcome the current NFU review but will be questioning why it has taken it quite so long for it to wake up, realise all is not well and do something about it.
They need of course to understand that it takes time for problems to filter
through to the heart of the NFU; even longer for them to be chewed over; and longer still for someone to decide they need to be addressed.
So given the fact that it was well over a decade ago that I was first made aware of the functional deficiencies of Red Tractor, perhaps we should be congratulating it for the alacrity of its response.