The first Freedom Food producers have already taken advantage of the RSPCA’s acceptance of increased external stocking densities – and early indications are that the system is working well.
The Lion code was amended in January last year to allow free range producers to increase stocking from 1,000 to 2,000 birds per hectare. But the RSPCA delayed making a decision until it saw evidence that bird welfare would not be adversely affected by the change. It finally agreed to increased stocking in September last year, and Freedom Food’s technical development manager, Bob Waller, has told the Ranger that the new stocking rules are now in use on some farms.
"It’s working so far. We are pleased with what people have done," he said. "People have contacted us and discussed their plans and that’s the way we would like it to carry on." He said that some of those who had switched early to the new stocking rates were producers who had ploughed up areas of range to run existing bird numbers on a smaller area of land.
The RSPCA’s agreement to the increase in stocking density came with additional conditions attached to producer standards. The main condition was that five per cent of the total range area should be provided with natural cover, although Bob said that Freedom Food was trying not to be too prescriptive about natural cover. "We want people to be able to use what they can. Obviously some people will be renting land and they may not be able to plant great big oak trees and this sort of thing." But he said he would like to think that tenant farmers could discuss with their landlords ways that they could achieve five per cent cover without having to plant massive trees that would cause major disruption. There could be smaller plantings that could be easily removed if the tenancy ended.
He said Freedom Food was trying to enable producers to make the best use of the land available to them. "If you had your building in the middle of a field, you could have your artificial shade and shelter and then almost like hedgerows going out at different angles from that. The birds could run along underneath the hedge or at the side of the hedge into an area of natural cover that could be planted trees or longer grass with shorter bits cut into it. There could be an old dead tree out of the hedge that they can go under and over and whatever. A reason to come away from the buildings," he said.
Bob said that in an ideal world there would be something like an orchard with trees not too closely planted. "You want the grass to remain underneath, you want some light to come under. We are not expecting it to produce shade and shelter all year round. We have got the artificial cover for that; we do know that trees will lose their leaves and in the winter there will be a different natural environment than in the summer. What we want is a range management plan."
The cover would need to be in place when a Freedom Food assessor arrived to check on whether conditions for increased stocking densities were being met, but the type of cover could differ from farm to farm. "Some people we spoke to in Yorkshire wanted to put pampas grass in for a year while the trees were getting established. We said that was fine. We do not want to be too prescriptive in the first instance."
Anyone wanting to take advantage of the increased stocking rules will need an assessment by a Freedom Food inspector before they can go ahead. Cases most likely to need an assessment at short notice are the ones involving a producer ploughing up range. Such an assessment will incur a one-off cost to the producer of £52 plus VAT. If a producer is looking to increase the number of birds he is likely to need planning permission and it is possible that the assessment could be carried out as part of the producer’s normal annual inspection. Those inspections are charged at £52 per 6,000 birds plus VAT.
The annual Freedom Food inspections are carried out to ensure that producers are complying with the standards laid down for them under the scheme’s rules. Bob says it is rare that a producer is found to be in serious breach of the standards that would involve suspension or removal from the scheme, although he said that more minor breaches were more common.
"Everybody should be 100 per cent compliant all of the time and the annual assessment will identify areas where people are non-compliant. They must immediately correct those non-compliances and show us objective evidence that they have," said Bob, who said that producers who were not complying with the standards were more likely to be subject to a separate monitoring visit by an RSPCA livestock officer. About 30 per cent of producers received such a visit each year and they were usually carried out at short notice.
"About 50 per cent have something," said Bob. "That might be that we think their litter is a bit bad inside the house, it might be that some of the shade and shelter has been blown away and they haven’t put it back. It’s mainly things like that. On the whole feeders, drinkers and that sort of thing are good. Pest control can be a problem sometimes. It’s a very small percentage that we would call the less well managed farms where you have perhaps got a bird that’s not been picked up when it had died a day or two earlier. Those are very few and far between really."
Freedom Food has 10 full-time and 10 part-time inspectors who carry out the assessment work. They are expecting a busy period with producers applying to increase stocking densities on their farms. Although it is difficult to estimate how many may make the switch, it is thought that about half of existing Freedom Food producers could seek to increase stocking densities.
