Chicken Farmers of Ontario adjusts on-farm audit cycle

Friday, February 8, 2013

by SUSAN MANN

Chicken Farmers of Ontario has changed the cycle for its package of audits made up of on-farm food safety, animal care and biosecurity to three years from seven.

The change was effective January 1 and means farmers undergo a full on-farm audit every three years instead of every seven years previously.

In its winter 2012 newsletter posted on its website, Chicken Farmers says the change was made as part of its regulation review and renewal project. The board approved changing the auditing process to a simplified three-year cycle.

“As a result of this change, the partial on-farm audit has been removed from the sequence,” the newsletter says.

Carl Stevenson, Chicken Farmers manager of field services, says the new, three-year cycle is an on-farm audit in the first year followed by a records assessment by trained Chicken Farmers field services representatives in the second year and then a self-declaration in the third year.

Previously the audit cycle, that’s part of Chicken Farmers of Canada’s on-farm food safety program, Safe, Safer, Safest, was a seven-year cycle. That program is shifting to a six-year cycle.

The former on-farm audit occurred in each of the first two years and involved a field services representative from Chicken Farmers touring the growing facilities, reviewing the farmer’s documented standard operating procedures and all the flock records and interviewing the farmer, Stevenson says.

Records assessment was done in the third year of the cycle. In the fourth year, farmers completed another questionnaire. That was followed, in the fifth year, with another on-farm audit, a records assessment in the sixth year and a self-declaration in the seventh year.

Dr. Gwen Zellen, vice president of food quality, operations and risk management, says the new on-farm food safety audit also includes ones for biosecurity and animal care. “The audit cycle is really to conduct those three key components.”

She says the national biosecurity standard was incorporated into the food safety program in 2011.

Farmers could also face additional on-farm audits because at least 10 per cent undergoing paper-based audits in any year will be selected for a random on-farm audit. In its newsletter, Chicken Farmers says those audits are being assigned based on risk and are targeted to farms having a high number of corrective action requests.

Chicken Farmers will also do additional on-farm audits on farms that don’t comply with its policies or regulations. A farm’s failure to comply with regulations could be flagged through inspections, observations, data reviews or complaints.

Stevenson says sometimes they’ll hear concerns from industry stakeholders, such as processors, catchers, hatchery or feed representatives. BF