yay!
finally, Woolworths has reversed their earlier position (that it is against company policy to reveal the names of their ‘free range’ auditors). they have provided me with contact details for auditors of their ‘free range’ poultry, lamb and beef. (i am not going to post that info, but if you want it, fill in the contact form on my blog and i can email them to you. i promise to follow it up and post whatever info i get out of the auditors on the site. if you can think of any questions you’d like me to ask, put a comment on here or fill in the contact form)
here is the reply from Woolworths’ Commercial Manager of Meat, Seafood and Poultry:
All of your information is correct and I am willing to provide the contact details for our auditors so you can gain clarity and peace of mind.
It is important to complete the Free range(FR) story as it goes wider than Poultry and includes Beef and Lamb. These two specie also have no FR protocols governing the requirements for production.
Woolworths has led the industry in developing FR production specifications aligned to the British and European standard. SAPA has used the Woollies specification as a guideline for their proposals to Government.
We have received many accolades for the progressive stance we have taken regarding FR and this year have been awarded a Golden Egg award by CIWF ( Compassion in World Farming) for our progressive stance in selling only Free Range Eggs.
Most recently we have also embarked on journey to protect the indiscriminate killing of problem predators in sheep farming and have worked with the Landmark Foundation in both sponsorship and in developing farmer guidelines – http://www.landmarkfoundation.org.za.
As you can see we are very proud of our record of doing business ethically and transparently.
In all instances we use independent auditors, both in SA and Namibia, from where we procure FR beef.
Please feel free to contact me should you require more information.
nice one Woolworths. thanks for getting back to me and other consumers via this blog.
questions for the independent auditors (feel free to contact me with any others you may have)
- what standards do you use? i.e. what stds have to be met to qualify as ‘free range’?
- who sets these standards? (you, WW, an international body)
- how often do you ‘audit’ farms?
- what happens if producers are not meeting standards?
- how ‘independent’ are you? i mean, if there are no laws regarding ‘free range’, if a producer isn’t meeting stds, and you tell WW, and WW still puts ‘free range’ on the product, what do you do? would you raise this with someone? who?
(p.s. if any of you haven’t heard of Compassion in World Farming, please go and check out the SA website or the international one. they do great work, was planning a blog post about them sometime in the future)
Good work here AL, and well done to Woolworths for coming to the party.
Possible questions for the auditors:
1) what is the auditing process?
2) what is checked on each visit?
3) are visits announced or unannounced?
4) how often do they visit?
5) how many people visit?
6) do the people that visit vary each time or is it the same people over and over?
7) are the reports from the audit available for public viewing?
8) Does the audit process conform to some sort of international standard?
9) Is the auditor liable and for what if the ‘certification’ is shown to be awarded undeservedly?
10) I can’t think of any more questions
11) Ja, that’s definitely it
By: relaxwithdax on October 28, 2008
at 3:50 pm
Hurray! Well done for raising the issue, and for persisting. And their response is, indeed, comprehensive and compelling. I look forward to hearing your report…
By: Nechama Brodie on October 28, 2008
at 5:28 pm
[...] made a difference), Woolworths have finally replied to the query – you can read the full response on Locavore’s blogsite – and not only revealed the details of their “independent auditors” (the people who [...]
By: Hunter Gatherer at The Times » Blog Archive » Food Activist Triumphs on October 28, 2008
at 5:43 pm
Well done on following through on this important issue.
For me, the true test comes when something does not comply with the stated standard. How does it get reported and more importantly closed out? A complete register needs to be kept (publicly?) listing promised actions and deadlines and tracked regularly.
In the absence of the above, I would have to believe that the supplier is 100% compliant or the auditors are in a sweetheart relationship with the suppliers.
By: Elias Jikelele on October 29, 2008
at 1:10 pm
well done! persistence pays off at last… and well done to woolworths for being transparent, even if it took a little while!
i look forward to hearing what the auditors have to say.
By: pia on October 29, 2008
at 4:00 pm
Great! I think it would very useful to have a public list of terms and definitions. E.g. what exactly does “Organic” mean? What is “free range”? What is “grain fed”?
Its easy to be reassured as a consumer by some terms without actually knowing what they mean. I remember a European friend telling me there was a category of chicken egg from ‘Barn floor’ chickens. Turns out these are the birds on the bottom row of the battery, i.e. on the ‘barn floor’!
By: Peter on October 29, 2008
at 4:26 pm
Good one!
Further comment to your point #1
A) Its not correct to simply assume that if the standards are “British” or “European” they’re good enough.
B) Also, saying an organisation is “aligned” to a standard does not really say anything significant and begs the reader to make the assumption that aligning means the same as conforming. I read the WW statement as saying that they used the overseas standards as a guideline only – to develop their own set of (possibly less stringent) specifications. If, on the other hand WW had said it “conformed” to the overseas standard, the message would’ve been easier to interpret. I just found it conspicuous that WW did not clearly define whether they tried to, or whether they actually did conform to a more widely-accepted standard.
By: smb on October 31, 2008
at 2:41 pm
Great work! Really admirable.
Have you contacted the auditors yet and gotten any form of response?
Thanks for researching this and getting so far! I would love to be kept in the loop as to the results!
By: Angela on November 3, 2008
at 10:04 am