Assured Food Standards
| Formation | 13 June 2000 |
|---|---|
| Legal status | Non-profit company |
| Purpose | Food production standards in the UK |
|
Region served
|
United Kingdom |
|
Membership
|
Food producers, processors, contract caterers, wholesalers, food service and 78,000 farmers |
|
Chief Executive
|
David Clarke |
|
Main organ
|
AFS board (Chairman - David Gregory) |
|
Parent organization
|
NFU |
| Affiliations | Ulster Farmers' Union, AHDB, Dairy UK, British Retail Consortium, Food and Drink Federation |
| Website | AFS |
Assured Food Standards is a British organisation that promotes and regulates food quality. It licenses the Red Tractor quality mark, a product certification programme that comprises a number of farm assurance schemes for food products, animal feed and fertilizer.
The Red Tractor scheme was launched in 2000 by the NFU, with the logo originally known as the Little Red Tractor, and also the British Farm Standard. It was launched on 13 June 2000.
Around the time of the launch, the NFU found in a survey that 70% of the British public had no idea what type of food their local farmers tended to produce.
In April 2009, Cains Brewery of Liverpool produced the first lager, Cains Export, to be accredited by the Red Tractor. Since June 2010, Carling cans of lager have displayed the logo, as the barley used has been certified.
All stages of food production are independently certified (inspected) to the Red Tractor standards before food can be labelled with the Red Tractor logo.
The Red Tractor Farm Assurance scheme is divided in different sectors:
Certification bodies the Red Tractor schemes work with include:
In 2009, around £10 billion of products were sold bearing the logo. A 0.001% royalty fee is charged to bear the logo.
The union flag displayed as part of the Red Tractor logo gives a guarantee that the produce was farmed, processed and backed in the UK. To qualify as "farmed" animals must be born, reared and slaughtered in the UK. This is in contrast to a simple union flag logo without the Red Tractor which is often used to simply denote UK based processing-a BBC investigation in 2013 revealed that there was a less than 1 per cent chance that a pack of Tesco pork chops labelled as British came from the British Isles.
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Wikipedia