Red Tractor
The Red Tractor logo means that you can trust the food you eat. Their independent inspectors have checked food or drink meets the comprehensive standards, from farms to pack. The standards cover:
- Traceability
Red Tractor operates world-leading standards on tracing your food from farms to pack. All users of the logo have to keep comprehensive records of their Red Tractor products and we regularly inspect them to ensure that this is happening. The flag in the Red Tractor logo tells you where your food has come from, so the union flag tells you it has been farmed and prepared in the UK.
- Food Safety and Hygiene
When you buy food for yourself or your family, you want to be able to trust that it is safe and produced to high standards. Red Tractor makes sure that everyone using our logo applies rigorous standards of food safety and hygiene to the way your food is produced – from farms to pack!
- Animal Welfare
It’s important to consumers that farmers protect the health and welfare of animals. Our standards make sure that our farmers have the knowledge and skills needed to look after animals, understand their needs and that the animal’s health and welfare is maintained by frequent checks.
- Environmental Protection
Farmers under the Red Tractor scheme must use responsible farming methods tominimise the risk of pollution. This means making sure that pesticide and fertilisers are stored safely and are applied correctly.
What do we mean by traceability?
Traceability is about understanding where a food has been produced and processed through its food chain. For example, this could be where a piece of fruit originates or the location of the dairy farm for a carton of milk.
Traceability is about knowing the stages of production and being able to trace back through the chain.
The public is the final link of the food chain, which started at the farm or producer.
The public need to build trust in the procedures and processes behind the traceability, linking together the production of food safety and quality.
What are food assurance schemes?
Food assurance schemes are run as product certification schemes.
These schemes use regular independent inspections to check that members are meeting specific standards.
They often use logos on consumer products to indicate they have fulfilled all the requirements.
The leading food assurance schemes aim to define the standards that most producers in the sector should meet.Over time, these schemes help to raise standards to improve the overall standard of the entire sector.
The Red Tractor can only be used on food that has been produced, packed, stored and transported to Red Tractor standards. The standards in all farming sectors (such as chicken, dairy or vegetables) have been agreed by a panel of experts to ensure that the food is safe and that the animals are well treated.
All of the Red Tractor assurance schemes operate to the international standard ISO Guide 65, which is the European Standard EN45011.
This guarantees that the independent inspectors are properly trained and sufficiently experienced. In all there are over 450 inspectors working on the Red Tractor scheme and they conduct over 60,000 inspections a year.
The Red Tractor logo covers many food groups, which have all been grown, processed and packed in Britain. This is shown by the Union Jack flag.
The Red Tractor logo tells the consumer that the food has been checked every step of the way - from farm to pack - and can be traced back to the farm source.
Key aspects
Assurance: no weak links in the chain, scheme covers animal feeds, farms, livestock transportation, and slaughter process, production methods, compositional standards for items like sausages, burgers.
Food safety: Everyone involved – from farmer to caterer – are experts in their field, trained to handle food safely and responsibly.
Animal welfare: Ensures animals have everything they need for a good quality of life and are treated with compassion by farmers who know what they are doing.