Red Tractor standards: training

One of the standards changing as part of the updated Red Tractor farm assurance is training. Whilst training isn’t a new concept for Red Tractor, with ever-increasing interest and scrutiny of how food is produced demonstrating a professional approach towards training and continuous professional development is essential, not only for protecting the reputation of your own farm, but the entire sector.

There are two new requirements for training, Red Tractor emailed all members with the updates but here’s a summary…

Responsible use of medicine training – at least one person who is responsible for overseeing the use of medicines on your unit needs to complete responsible use of medicines training.

The inclusion of this new requirement will help drive medicine use best practice across UK farms. Increased uptake of medicines training is one of the pig sector’s new targets as established by the RUMA Targets Taskforce and therefore this new requirement is helping to support the pig industry demonstrate its commitment to reducing and refining antibiotic use.

Red Tractor recognise that lot of training on this topic has already been undertaken by pig producers in recent years. Therefore, any training undertaken since 1 Jan 2018 will be accepted, however a certificate of completion/attendance will need to be provided during your Red Tractor audit as evidence – you should be able to request one from the course provider if you don’t have one already.
Importantly the training may be delivered by any provider, including vet practices, but for training undertaken after 1 November only courses on Red Tractor’s approved list will be accepted (list available on Red Tractor website as and when courses approved).

UK Pig Industry Welfare Training platform

A new low-cost online training portal is being established by AHDB following development in collaboration with the Pig Health and Welfare Council, National Pig Association, Pig Veterinary Society and Red Tractor.

Designed to provide an easily accessible blended approach to learning and upskilling it will consist of training material including informative videos with voiceovers and multiple-choice questions to check understanding.

When the revised version of the Red Tractor standards come into effect on 1 November there is a new requirement that anyone involved with care of pigs on your unit must have completed pig welfare training via the platform within three months of its launch.

Initially the training will focus on best practice in the moving and handling of pigs.

Red Tractor has also put together a video of the main changes to the Red Tractor pigs standards – watch here