Arguments for and against the continuing use of accreditation systems by the big retailers are well-rehearsed and ongoing. They need not be entered into once again here. But what is being done to make the plethora of systems introduced since the late 1990s easier and less expensive to administer and how are growers’ criticisms being answered?
ADAS horticultural consultant Dan Drakes is in no doubt that the auditing bodies are changing, certainly in terms of duplication where growers are asked to undertake more than one audit for different bodies and the audits ask much the same questions.
Drakes, also the scheme technical manager for auditing body National Britannia, says work was being done to combine audits for BOPP with other standards, for example on packhouses. Other accreditation services like Linking Environment And Farming had, he says, a lot of crossover and similarities with BOPP, for instance on wildlife concerns.
Combining audits have a lot of very obvious benefits. Instead of multiple inspections taking up many days you get one auditor on one day. He reckoned dovetailing audits like this can speed up the process and save up to 40 percent of the costs incurred by growers.
Although there was no intention at present to link BOPP and Assured Produce audits, there being too few growers needing such a combination, he said there was no reason why it could not be done in the future.
“We try to accommodate requirements,” he says. “We benchmark BOPP against EurepGap so that if the grower wants both they can have it on one go.”
BOPP’s technical committee is, of course, made up of growers whose role it is to develop the standard. The industry’s desire for simplification seems to be reflected in the fact that as growers they are helping BOPP move towards a core standard upon which ‘extra bits’ can be bolted afterwards as necessary.
But does this fully address growers’ concerns about the increasing pressures imposed by the auditing ‘industry’? Understandably, growers on the whole seem reluctant to come out and blast a system which seems so close to the hearts of their customers.
One fruit producer told Commercial Grower he felt he was speaking for many in the industry when he said: “It feels like there’s a group of people who sit around all day asking each other what they can do next to complicate my life. I mean, what’s it all achieving? We get duplication with Nature’s Choice, Field to Fork and LEAF. Same questions, different audits. Loads of bureaucracy. You get the feeling they are making it up as they go along. My office is plastered with certificates but really, basically, what good do they do? It’s a paper chase. It’s just creating work for auditors. It’s just ticking the boxes. It’s overload.”
Neil Bragg, of Bulrush, says companies are encumbered with the number of accreditation schemes with which they must be aligned. As a man closely associated with BOPP he echoes Dan Drake’s views that a core scheme which can be added to is the way forward. He says he has mentioned as much to B&Q and Homebase representatives and they do not seem averse to the idea.
One bugbear, though, seems to be EurepGap’s intention to ‘revamp’ its standards every three years. Bragg saw no need for it and says it only complicates growers’ lives at a time when the general momentum is towards simplification. BOPP is having to re-benchmark itself against EurepGap this December.
“EurepGap’s aim of becoming the single, universal scheme is OK in theory,” he says. “But that is not happening.”
In an effort to ‘walk the talk’ BOPP is dropping the old bronze, silver (benchmarked against EurepGap) and gold accreditation stages (see p12-13 for more). Now it has a pre-accreditation year, the full BOPP accreditation and an extra module ‘bolt-on’ which can be acquired for EurepGap standardisation.
“We’re keeping the core of the BOPP scheme,” he says. “The BOPP accreditation is developmental. There’s no pass or fail involved whereas with the UKAS/EurepGap module it’s black and white. You either pass or fail.
“Accreditation is good in some respects as it makes you focus on your business and doing things right. However, if you don’t want to trade with the companies that demand accreditation, say some of the garden centres, they ask ‘what’s the incentive for us?’
Assured Produce is the body most growers of edibles will have come across. The scheme’s Liz Kerrigan said AP was linked with Assured Food Standards and as such was able to facilitate ‘integrated’ audits. That meant, for instance, if you grew carrots and combinable crops the two auditing bodies, under AFS, could provide accreditation services through one person on a single day, cutting costs and time. Assured Food Standards, established in 2000, is an independent organisation set up to manage the assurance schemes in the principle commodity sectors and the British Farm Standard logo (or Little Red Tractor).
For such things as Nature’s Choice and LEAF Marque, AP was used, she said, as a base or core set of standards onto which could be bolted extra options. AP is also benchmarked against EurepGap.
Kerrigan added that these developments were in response to growers and farmers asking for simplification.
Food Assurance Schemes - a brief summary
Assurance schemes are described as ‘voluntary systems’ for food manufacturers and producers. Although if you want to do business with the big retailers, and even some of the smaller ones, it is virtually impossible without accreditation.
The schemes set out production standards covering food safety, environmental protection, animal-welfare issues and other characteristics that might be considered important by anyone buying a food product.
Farm assurance refers to the setting of specific standards and monitoring of these in a formal way on-farm. There have been a number of reasons for this growth, including The Food Safety Act, 1990, which placed emphasis on buyers to take due care in assuring the safety of food they buy/sell. To achieve ‘due diligence’, auditing of suppliers (including farms) increased.
Throughout the 1990s different farm assurances schemes were developed in different parts of the UK and for different products. For some products there were several schemes, operating slightly different standards.
Over 78,000 farmers and growers in the UK are farm assured, accounting for between 65 and 90 percent of output in the main commodity sectors. The standards for cereals, fruit and vegetables cover all aspects of the production process including cultivations, plant health, harvesting and storage. They also cover good practice in relation to protecting the environment.
Independent, third party certification bodies are contracted by AFS to provide verification to agreed scheme standards. For credibility, these must be accredited by UKAS to the international standard EN45011. A number of companies operate across a range of schemes. These include:
European Food Safety Inspection Service (EFSIS)
Checkmate International (CMi)
Product Authentication International (PAI)
Scottish Food Quality Certification (SFQC) (in Scotland)
LEAF Marque gives consumers the assurance that the produce comes from a farm that produces their food in an environmentally responsible way. LEAF encourages farmers to adopt Integrated Farm Management (IFM) and high environmental standards.
LEAF Marque produce is given a stamp on the packaging of fruit and vegetables which is stocked in all Waitrose stores, Fresh & Wild and other retail outlets including the LEAF Demonstration Farm in Hampshire.
APS is an industry-wide initiative that addresses all the important issues concerning the production of ‘produce’ - fruit, salads and vegetables. The Scheme has been awarded UKAS accreditation. The major supermarkets and processors operating in the UK support the scheme.
The EurepGap standard was said to be designed to maintain consumer confidence in food quality and safety. Other important goals are to minimise detrimental environmental impacts of farming operations, optimise the use of inputs and to ensure a responsible approach to worker health and safety.
EurepGap members include retailers, producers/farmers and associate members from the input and service side of agriculture. EurepGap is working with over 100 Certification Bodies in more than 70 countries.
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