FarmCare
The guarantee that your lamb has been raised on farms that have the highest quality standards in New Zealand and possibly the world.
The FarmCare policy is to provide Integrity - "we do what we say"!
FarmCare is a farm quality assurance scheme with four cornerstones:
1. Eating quality - an assurance your lambs will always be an exciting eating experience
- Raised to look good when you purchase and take it home to prepare
- Raised to maximise tenderness, juiciness and flavour
2. Food safety - an assurance your lamb is very safe to eat
- Free from disease
- Free from antibiotics, hormones and harmful chemicals
- Fed only fresh green New Zealand pastures
- Traceable back to the farm of origin
3. Animal welfare - an assurance your lamb has been raised according to the Five Freedoms under conditions that optimise its physical and mental well-being
- Free-range for its whole life
- Livestock intensively monitored and managed for their well being
- Detailed preventive animal health planning in conjunction with experienced veterinarians
- Handled to minimise fear and distress
4. Environmental responsibility - an assurance your lambs has been raised under systems that balance profit with the needs for
- Land sustainability
- Our employees
- Our local community
FarmCare policy
The FarmCare Farm Assurance Programme has the following general requirements:
- Inspection should show that farms are compliant with all current existing legislation
- Animal health programmes will be preventive whenever possible and will ensure rapid diagnosis and treatment of injury and disease
- Traceability to farm of origin should be apparent throughout
- All people handling stock will be competent and trained
- Risks are identified to become points of critical control for livestock production
- Our standards, which usually exceed the legal requirements, wherever possible are specific and measurable, supported by research and open to the public for inspection
- The programme is designed to generate information and expertise to enable continuous improvement
General statements of acceptability of production methods are not appropriate. In cases where it is different to define measurable standards an associated characteristic may be measured instead. This can be subsequently audited to provide assurance. For some of the standards there may be no benchmarks, however, as data becomes available the programme will evolve to develop these.
The FarmCare programme is managed by AgriNetworks Ltd. Each farm has a very close relationship with a StockCare veterinarian who regularly monitors farm information as it enters our database. This means the veterinarians have a very good understanding of what has been happening on the farm and are positioned to make recommendations when deemed necessary.