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4. Auditable Industry Quality Assurance Programs and Self-Regulation
In the last few years many of the animal industries have developed or have been working towards food safety based quality assurance schemes, either within companies or within industries. These schemes reassure retailers and consumers of the safety and quality of animal products.
The quality assurance 'movement' over the past ten years has grown with a predominant focus on updating food safety, and incorporating animal health and traceability.
More recently, quality assurance programs have been seen as the most appropriate way to include elements such as environmental management systems, occupational health and safety and animal welfare.
A number of ‘welfare quality assurance’ projects have been designed to be integrated into the existing quality assurance models and frameworks in a number of Australian industries.
These projects were developed by the Animal Welfare Science Centre (a centre partnered by the University of Melbourne), Monash University and the Department of Primary Industries Victoria.
During the development of these projects there were a number of changes due to the increased importance of animal welfare in Australian livestock industries, and which made the delivery of these projects timely.
Some of the changes were made after the following considerations:
- Animal welfare is becoming a customer requirement in some industry sectors.
- There is an increasing recognition by livestock industries that animal welfare is an integral part of daily business.
- Fast food chains in the USA and Europe are setting animal welfare standards that their suppliers must meet.
- Countries in Europe are marketing products that have perceived animal welfare characteristics.
- Clear messages from governments for industries to use QA programs.
- Animal welfare Codes of Practice in Australia are considered as minimum guidelines and cannot be incorporated into QA based programs easily.
- The livestock industries are becoming more involved in defining and demonstrating continuous improvement, leadership and best practice standards (eg. in the form of education and extension training programs for industry participants).
- Industries were taking a greater responsibility in participating in community debate on animal welfare.
As a result, the animal welfare information was developed into a series of documents that could be incorporated into industry quality assurance programs for the egg, broiler, pork, dairy, livestock transport and processing and more recently, sheep and beef industries.
For more information, contact John Barnett or Michelle Edge at the Animal Welfare Science Centre, The University of Melbourne on phone (03) 8344 4000.