AABP Executive Director Dr. Fred Gingrich is joined by Dr. Steven Roche, a PhD epidemiologist and owner of ACER Consulting Group located in Guelph, Ontario, Canada. The National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) contracts with ACER Consulting Group to assist with data evaluation, training and development of the standards for the Farmers Assuring Responsible Management (FARM) program. We discuss the development process of the FARM program and how veterinarians and dairy producers are involved in all steps of this process. Reviewing data from previous evaluations is utilized as the volunteers work to develop program updates to be considered by the NMPF Board of Directors. Roche describes the different corrective actions which are Mandatory Corrective Action Plans (MCAP) requiring nine months to resolve and Continuous Improvement Plans (CIP) which require three years to resolve. We discuss the top 5 MCAP’s and CIP’s from the FARM 4.0 evaluations collected to date. So far, approximately 13,000 2nd party and 168 3rd party evaluations have been performed. Roche is involved with analyzing the data from the evaluations as well as compare the results from the 2nd and 3rd party evaluators. Roche points out that several of the common corrective actions require veterinary involvement such as protocol development, having an annually signed VCPR, continuing education training for family and non-family labor, and protocols for disbudding and pain management. We discuss data collected on broken tails, body condition scores, locomotion scoring, and pain management protocols for disbudding. Roche encourages veterinarians to consult with their dairy farm clients to help them prepare for their evaluations to ensure they are in compliance with all standards. This is a great opportunity for veterinarians to offer a service to their clients that requires veterinarian involvement.  

If you are attending the conference in Long Beach, Calif., we encourage you to sign up for Seminar 11, Veterinary Role in Helping Farms to Meet and Excel in Welfare Audits, which will be held Wednesday, September 21 from 8 am to 5 pm. Contact the AABP office to add this seminar to your registration. 

 Links:

 National Milk Producers Federation FARM Program

 FARM Program Standards

 FARM Program Resources

 AABP Guidelines and Position Statements

 AABP Resource Document Pain Management