2004-2005: Assured Food
Standards (AFS)
AERU have undertaken two
projects for Assured Food Standards (AFS), an independent organisation
set up to manage the 'little red tractor' label that can be found on
many supermarket products. The standards AFS set cover a range of
sectors, including beef and lamb, pork, poultry, dairy, vegetables,
cereals and oilseeds, and sugar.
The first project compared
the standards for 6 schemes to the Cross Compliance measures. The
objective was to identify the gaps and commonalties between the scheme
standards and the range of Good Agricultural and Environmental
Conditions (GAECs) and Statutory Management Requirements (SMRs) that
form Cross Compliance (in 2005). Farmers need to meet all the GAECs and
SMRs that apply to them to receive their Single Farm Payment. This
comparison exercise was undertaken to help explore the potential role
the schemes may have in relation to cross compliance.
The second project compared
the 6 AFS standards to each other to identify areas where some
harmonisation may be possible. The first step was to assess what
components of the AFS standards are generic to all farms. This provided
a full spectrum of generic activities that are assessed by all the AFS
standards combined. A comparison exercise was then undertaken comparing
the 6 AFS standards to the generic suite of farm practices. This
highlighted the key similarities and differences between the different
standards and assessed, where appropriate, the different approaches
taken by the standards with respect to style, format, wording and
general approach. The remaining components of the standards (i.e. those
that are unique to specific sectors), were examined in terms of their
structure, such as order of questions and format etc., to explore any
similarities in the approaches taken.
Publications
- Tzilivakis, J., Lewis,
K.A., Green, A. & Warner, D.J. (2005). Comparison of Assured
Food Standards to Cross Compliance.
Report prepared for Assured Food Standards by the Agriculture and
Environment Research Unit (AERU) at the University of Hertfordshire
(UH) in collaboration with TLR Ltd.
- Tzilivakis, J. &
Lewis, K.A. (2005). Harmonisation of the Assured Food Standards
(AFS).
Report prepared for Assured Food Standards by the Agriculture and
Environment Research Unit (AERU) at the University of Hertfordshire
(UH).
Contact
Dr John Tzilivakis
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