Red Tractor has criticised claims that said its farm members are 'more likely to pollute' than non-assured farms as 'misleading and inaccurate'.
The claims, published in The Times on 3 April, quoted an Environment Agency report from 2020 that stated ‘Red Tractor farms are more likely to pollute the environment’.
The report is based on data from 2014-2019, including 3,000 Environment Agency farm inspections and over 4,000 agricultural pollution incidents.
It showed that Red Tractor Assured farms were found to be less compliant with environmental regulations (26%) than non-member farms (19%).
But Red Tractor, which is the UK’s biggest farm and food assurance scheme, said this was "inaccurate, misleading and a disservice" to its farmer members.
The body added that the data in Environment Agency report "actually supports the opposite conclusion".
"For example, the EA report does show that the sector with the largest volume of pollution incidents is dairy," Red Tractor said in a statement.
"But the data in the report also shows that pollution incidents took place on 8% of Red Tractor dairy farms, while there were incidents on 77% of non Red Tractor dairy farms."
Following the news article's publication, environmental charity River Action said it had instructed lawyers to investigate whether Red Tractor was in breach of Advertising Standard Authority Code.
The group also questioned whether the environmental claims made on Red Tractor’s website were "legal and honest".
Charles Watson, chairman of River Action said: “These extraordinary findings by the Environment Agency confirm that the Red Tractor logo is essentially a certification of poor environmental performance.
"The fact that so many farms are causing pollution under the Red Tractor logo is a monumental scandal.”
Since the Environment Agency's report was published in 2020, Red Tractor has included a small number of its recommendations into the latest version of its farming standards.
These set environmental protection requirements for farmers and include requirements around slurry storage and use, for example.
"Where we find issues on-farm that are at high-risk of causing a pollution incident, we report them to the EA as the relevant regulatory authority," Red Tractor explained.
"Reducing agricultural pollution is a difficult problem which requires action from across the industry, including Red Tractor and the EA among others."
The body added: "We continue to push for a data sharing arrangement on environmental protections with the EA, which may help to provide a more robust way of addressing pollution incidents on Red Tractor assured farms."
