With over 34,000 audits taking place on Irish Beef & Sheep farms each year, Emma O’Gorman, Quality Assurance and Origin Green co-ordinator at Bord Bia joins Catherine Egan on this week’s Beef Edge podcast to bust some myths around the audit.

Emma describes how it demonstrates to customers that quality beef and lamb are produced sustainably under an accredited Scheme and provide an on-going means of demonstrating best practice at farmer level. There are 51,584 certified beef producers of which 41,770 are beef-only producers.

Every 18 months farmers must complete an audit and Emma describes the preparation in advance of the audit and highlights that help is available to farmers through the website, the Bord Bia helpline and in the pre-audit pack sent out to farmers.

Emma also discusses animal remedy usage recording, animal remedy purchases recording and the farm safety risk assessment as being the main areas of non-compliance and outlines how this can be overcome.

With farm audits starting again on farm, Emma highlights how the auditor is there to help and make the process as easy as possible on the day.

For further information:

Preparing for the audit

https://farm.bordbia.ie/Prepare.aspx

Bord Bia website

https://farm.bordbia.ie

Bord Bia contacts:

Call 015240410 - To speak directly to Helpdesk staff

0831800069 - To send closeout evidence by SMS (ensure herd number is included in message)

[email protected] - To email closeout evidence (insert herd number as subject title of email)

Bord Bia helpdesk, Tralee Road Industrial Estate, Castleisland, Co. Kerry - Postal address to post closeout evidence to.

For more episodes and information covered on the Beef Edge, visit the show page at:

https://www.teagasc.ie/thebeefedge

Produced on behalf of Teagasc by LastCastMedia.com