Farm Assurance at 35: A Reflection on its Roots, Realities, and the Road Ahead

By Peter Brown, Quality Meat Scotland Board Member

Anniversaries. Some are good, some are bad.  Some happy, some sad.  If I’m honest I’m not a big anniversary person (my wife will testify to that!) so it was a surprise when I was reminded this week by a QMS colleague that it is 35 years since farm assurance was launched in Scotland. I should know because “I was there” and it seems like yesterday.

It is also one year since I wrote a piece in this space about the need for QMS to keep listening to farmer views of farm assurance.  The UK review of farm assurance followed a period of industry discussion and feedback on the addition of ‘greening’ elements to Red Tractor standards.

Farm assurance was a big part of my working life.  In fact I’m currently writing up its origin story which has included the enjoyable task of meeting up again with various characters who were involved at the time of its creation. I’ve a few more folk to chat to and I’m not expecting the end result to be a bestseller but I’d like to, somewhere, record the story of how it came to be. I’ve read too many times, including in the recently published UK Farm Assurance review itself, that farm assurance was born out of UK food scares in the 1990s. There is also some suggestion that there are shared origins with organic schemes. None of this is an accurate picture.

The simplest way I can summarise its origin is to say that farm assurance was set up to show the world that Scotch beef, lamb and Scottish pigmeat were being produced well.  How else would most people who buy our meat know what was happening on farm?  As consumers were asking more food and welfare questions in the 80s, it was becoming increasingly hard to expect them to just take our word for it. Scotch was a big brand but we had to build more substantive, evidence-based claims behind it so that we could retain our leading position and public confidence in good practice. 

I have always acknowledged that farm assurance can be a disrupter to farming life. While showing the world that things are done well on farm, for a few when things have gone wrong, there can be a sting, a consequence that can cost dearly.  I take no pleasure in that but QMS claims about Scotch meat have to be underpinned with integrity.

The UK Farm Assurance review listed a number of recommendations for change, although many were specific to other parts of the UK and not directly relevant to Scotland.  For example one recommendation was that other schemes should move to “whole of life” assurance.  There is a huge task ahead for others to match what we have delivered for many years. Nevertheless there were plenty of points made that have relevance to QMS schemes and can help shape our future.  There remain things that can be improved, things that can be streamlined and, as always, a need for constant attentiveness to farming QA members - which I know QMS is well aware of.  To paraphrase the UK Review, farm assurance is not something that “needs to be done to farmers” but that “needs to be done for farmers”.  Perhaps this is the anniversary message.

About Peter:

Peter studied agriculture at Aberdeen, worked for 6 years with the Highlands & Islands Development Board in food and farming, then became involved in 1990 in establishing farm assurance. He was founder and Managing Director of Scottish Food Quality Certification (Edinburgh) and CMi Certification (Oxford), running assurance schemes across the UK, Europe and South America.