RSPCA Assured has announced it will 'significantly' boost the number of announced and unannounced visits to farms, following a review of the scheme.
An independent review was launched in response to growing scrutiny of farm standards due to various exposés, which led to the resignation of Sir Brian May as RSPCA Assured's vice-president.
Publishing the findings, the RSPCA said it was reassured that the review, carried out by an audit and consulting firm, found that the assurance scheme was "operating effectively to provide assurance that animal welfare standards are being met across members".
A total of 225 RSPCA Assured farms were randomly selected for unannounced visits, with 200 unannounced assessments completed, covering 22.5m individual animals on site at the point of inspection.
Across the 200 farms assessed, the vast majority (93%) had less than five non-compliances out of a minimum of over 500 welfare standards per species.
There were 294 total non-compliances across those sites, but many of these non-compliances were for minor or administrative issues and RSPCA said it was working to remedy these areas.
The report concluded that the findings from its unannounced programme of farms sampled were consistent with the results of standard scheme assessment visits, which suggests that "current assessment programme is detecting non-compliances and that there aren’t wider welfare issues".
RSPCA Assured said: “The findings from our own assessments and data, are consistent with the findings from the independent review."
The report made 20 recommendations and RSPCA Assured said it would be taking all of them forward, including significantly increasing the number of announced and unannounced visits to farms.
The assurance scheme will explore the use of more technological aids, including additional CCTV and using body worn cameras to aid identification of issues and improved enforcement of standards.
It will also develop and apply a grading to all non-compliances identified to prioritise actions by members.
Following the publication of the independent review, the RSPCA said it had an 'ambitious modernisation programme' for RSPCA Assured, which was already underway.
"This includes significantly increased unannounced visits and further exploring the use of technology – such as body worn cameras and CCTV – to give comprehensive and real-time welfare insights.”
The charity added: “We are reassured that this independent review of 200 RSPCA Assured farms has found that the scheme is ‘operating effectively’ to assure animal welfare on member farms.
“We have now commissioned two independent reviews of the scheme in the space of four years, both of which show that RSPCA Assured is making a real difference to millions of farmed animals’ lives right now.
"This reflects our own data from visiting nearly 4,000 farms in the last year."
