Emily Bright, our Farm Assurance Manager, gives an insight into the Red Tractor audit process and explains how preparation is key to avoid any non-conformances.
Within our Farm Assurance department at CXCS, we help clients prepare for audits all year round. There generally isn’t a quieter time of year for audits, although naturally farmers prefer to avoid busy periods when they’re lambing, calving, or combining. Businesses are inspected at different intervals, depending on their farming enterprises and assurance schemes.
As part of our involvement in assisting farmers with their paperwork and ensuring they are prepared ahead of these inspections, we also attend audits where required and keep in close contact with clients to support with any corrective evidence required to fulfil non-conformances.
Although we understand that inspectors audit farming businesses to the same documented standards, we do notice that within these requirements there can be a degree of subjectiveness, and some areas are more open to interpretation than others. Audit feedback is important to us, and we’ve been keeping an ear to the ground to ensure we continue to improve our service and help clients in the best way we can.
An area where we notice particular variation is around the requirement to ‘communicate’ information. For example, under all Red Tractor standards the health and safety policy must be ‘effectively communicated’ to all relevant workers. Likewise, under the Red Tractor Fresh Produce standards, written hygiene policies must be in place and ‘communicated to personnel.’
For some inspectors, having these policies written and documented in a folder will suffice, but for others, they might put greater emphasis on the requirement to ‘communicate’. To achieve this, you could ask all workers to read and sign the health and safety policy. Additionally, inspectors might also expect these policies to be readily available for workers to view, for example they might want to see them displayed in the work area – especially for fresh produce hygiene policies.
Each Red Tractor standard is different, and there can be variation between auditors too. Therefore, it’s helpful to consider these areas where there could be room for interpretation. Although it’s difficult when there are arguably more pressing jobs to be done outside, preparation is key to reducing stress and ensuring audits run smoothly.
If you need any further guidance or advice, please contact the CXCS office on 019891 590 514 and our Farm Assurance team will be more than happy to help.
