Red Tractor urges vets to ensure compliance with eMB standard

Red Tractor pork producers and vets are being reminded that failure to comply with the new antibiotic recording requirement could result in suspension from the scheme.

Antibiotic data must be uploaded on a quarterly basis onto the eMB-Pigs electronic medicines book within six weeks from the last day of the quarter.

A total of 9% of Red Tractor Pork scheme members incurred non-conformances as a result of not uploading data from quarters 2 and 3 of 2017 by the November 11 deadline.  

Quarter 4 data must now be uploaded by February 11, 2018.  

In an email to pig vet members, Red Tractor says it is ‘imperative individual farmers input their total antibiotic usage data by the deadlines Red Tractor have set’.

“The eMB data will be used at a national, aggregated level to provide an estimation of overall use, enabling year-on-year comparisons to be made. The data contained within eMB, together with sales data from the VMD’s Veterinary Antibiotic Resistance and Sales Surveillance (VARSS) Report, are being used to monitor antibiotic use in the pig sector,” it says.

It requests that vets highlight on the QVR form when a producer does not have the sufficient antibiotic usage data uploaded onto eMB to meet the standard. Vets are urged to tick the relevant box recommending ‘conditional continuing (of) scheme registration’ in the event of non-conformance and then send the QVRs to the relevant certification body ‘in a timely manner following your visit’.

“The certification body will then act upon any comments you have made relating to a non-conformance against the Red Tractor Scheme standards by requesting corrective action from the Red Tractor producer within a 14-day timeframe. Failure by the member to provide sufficient corrective action may result in suspension from the Red Tractor Scheme,” the email says.

It added: “We trust you appreciate the importance of compliance to the eMB Red Tractor standard and hope that you can support us in trying to ensure pig producers, who have yet to upload their antibiotic data, do so quickly and accurately.” 

Mark White, president of the Pig Veterinary Society, said: “I encourage all Red Tractor vets to act on this communication and, where possible, consider whether the quarterly usage figures, produced from the data uploaded by pig producers, are credible”.

The Red Tractor deadlines for uploading data can be found in Appendix AM.f.1 in the Red Tractor Pig Standards here