FARMING SCOTLAND MAGAZINE
NFU Scotland
Wonnacott, divisional QHSE manager at Almarai. “NSF has been hugely supportive throughout the whole process, which enabled us to setup up and aligned our animal welfare management system to the latest international standards.” GAWS aligns with Almarai’s sustainability strategy, Better Every Day, which focuses on caring for consumers, protecting the environment and producing responsible products. NSF GAWS establish best practices by benchmarking against global animal welfare regulations and domestic animal welfare regulatory requirements, industry standards and codes of practices. Consistent with the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) Technical Specifications 34700 and World Organisation of Animal Health (OIE) guidelines. A facility must create, document, and implement an animal welfare management system to achieve certification. There are three levels of conformance from baseline, assurance to certification, awarded to sites that demonstrate total commitment and compliance. All levels require independent audits to verify compliance and include zero tolerance for animal abuse, mistreatment or neglect. NSF GAWS eliminates the need for food companies with global supply chains to navigate a range of different local and regional approaches to demonstrate their commitment to animal wellness by having one common, globally applicable solution. NSF Global Animal Wellness Standards are one of a host of services provided by NSF International experts to help you verify food management systems, mitigate risk and protect your business.
Leadership is needed to protect our food prices and security By Martin Kennedy, President, NFU Scotland
Martin Kennedy, President, NFU Scotland
Governments and supermarkets need to waken up quick or they will be held responsible for the biggest food inflation rises in generations. The horrendous situation in Ukraine is deteriorating every day and the ramifications of this war will have long lasting impacts on our ability to produce food. The cost of production linked to fertiliser, fuel, energy and animal feed prices continue to rocket at a rate that makes business planning incredibly challenging. Food inflation is deemed to be something the Government and the country is trying to avoid, but unless there is a significant rise in retail prices that recognises that unprecedented cost of production increase, farmers will scale back on production; our fragile food security position will be further undermined, and food inflation will be even greater long term. UK Government Ministers telling us in March that we
don’t need fertiliser, there’s enough manure and slurry to compensate for the loss of artificial fertiliser shows a real gulf in understanding what is happening on the ground. Farmers will not produce food without seeing a return, for far too long we have been taken for granted and been rewarded poorly for our fantastic efforts to feed the country with high quality food. From a livestock perspective, my own costs for fertiliser alone have risen from £3.00 per bale of silage to £11.00 per bale. When you add in fuel and plastic wrap, it looks like the only way forward is to reduce numbers. Multiply that across the country, add in difficulties for some sectors sourcing labour, and the effect on the essential critical mass of Scottish farm output will be devastating. Any reduction in production will have a serious impact on the viability of the Scottish food processing
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sector which is also under pressure with greater energy costs and labour challenges. The world has changed beyond belief in a very short space of time – the reasons driving that change are tragic - and food security must now be our number one priority. Climate change and biodiversity must continue to be addressed through future policy change but right now we must have a reality check and focus on what is the most important energy source of all, food. Leadership and decision making must come now from government and retailers. We must have a supply chain that works fairly across all sectors if farmers and crofters are to continue to produce food rather than scale back production and the economic and social consequences of potential food shortages that would lead to. We must future-proof our supply chains and be able to feed ourselves.
