Assured Food Standards, the organisation behind the Red Tractor, has a comprehensive range of standards that cover the production of chicken, pork, lamb, beef, turkey, fruit, vegetables, salad, flour and other cereal products, and dairy products.
Safe food, healthy animals and a healthy environment
The main areas covered by our standards are food safety, animal welfare and care for the environment. Food safety is vital when bugs like salmonella and campylobacter are on the prowl. If you think good hygiene is important when you’re preparing and serving food at home, we don’t think you should have to settle for anything less from farmers and food companies.
When it comes to animal welfare, our standards require Red Tractor farmers to provide their livestock with fresh water and a healthy diet at all times, as well as adequate shelter and space. From an environmental perspective we require that our farmers take care of wildlife habitats and make sure they don’t pollute streams and rivers.
All our farm standards are published in full on our website for you to read – just click on the links at the bottom of this page if you want to know more.
From the farm to the supermarket…and the restaurant kitchen
Our standards don’t just apply to what happens on the farm. We want to ensure that safety and hygiene are maintained all the way from the field to the supermarket.
To achieve this we make checks at every critical step in the supply chain. We make sure, for example, that farmers get their animal feed from approved sources and that cleanliness and good hygiene are observed in the places where Red Tractor meat and salads are prepared and packaged.
Only when your food has been packaged ready for sale, having met our standards every step of the way, can it qualify to display the Red Tractor logo on the label.
You may also see the Red Tractor on restaurant menus. When you do it means we have granted permission for the logo to be used because we’ve checked that the restaurant is using ingredients from Red Tractor farms, produced to the same high standards that apply to Red Tractor food and drink in the shops.
Experience and expertise
To set standards in any area of food production, we form a committee of experts on the topic.
These committees bring together not only different perspectives from various parts of the food and farming industry but also independent academic and scientific expertise. Each committee has detailed knowledge of the legislation relating to the topic it is dealing with. We’re committed to reviewing and updating all our standards in the light of the latest scientific research.
Giving you peace of mind
Our standards are not some wish list that farmers and others in the food industry vaguely aspire to. They’re practical, meaningful and strictly enforced.
Red Tractor farmers are regularly assessed by independent inspectors to check that they are doing what the standards require.
Not everyone meets our standards, of course. Some farms pass our inspections with flying colours. In other cases the inspector might find some points on which the standards are not met, and we make sure that action is taken to put things right.
For you as a shopper there is peace of mind in the scale and the thoroughness of the whole system. Every year there are around 60,000 inspections across every critical stage of food production, processing and packing to ensure that our standards are being met and that all Red Tractor products can be traced back to the farms where they came from.