What’s worse than one gruelling audit in which a farmer is forced to show and tell how he grows his crops, how he stores his crops and how he ships his crops?Having to do more than a dozen audits like that, according to an expert on on-farm food production inspections.
“There are some producers in high risk products that are being audited – and these are two to three day audits – 15 times a year,” Victor Muliyil, manager of food safety services for SGS North America, said in an interview during the Canada Grains Council’s annual meeting.
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“That’s 25 percent of your work.”
Muliyil spoke to the grains council about the increasing importance of audits within the food production system, but focused on the problem of auditing duplication. Different audits have been developed by dozens of companies to monitor food production practices.
Most auditing now is done within the grain handling and food production systems, but auditing will begin reaching the farmgate soon, Muliyil said.
The problem with audits is there are so many different ones, Muliyil said, even though most measure the same things.
There is little reason to repeat the auditing process, but most audits operate independently and do not accept each other’s results.
Muliyil said the food industry is going to face a backlash if it tries to force farmers to undergo too many audits of their on-farm production practices.
“When it hits the farm there’s going to be a groundswell of resistance to multiple auditing. People are going to say, ‘this is just stupid,’ ” said Muliyil.
“If a farmer is doing a good job, he wants to show it, but he doesn’t want to show it 12 times.”
Muliyil, whose company develops auditing systems and does audits, said there are only a few key points in farmers’ crop production systems that need to be monitored, so it should be easy to develop a uniform audit for grain growers.
“There are only so many ways a farmer can cheat,” said Muliyil.
Audits should cover farmer training, land use, storage, shipping, chemical use and water management.
“No matter who’s auditing, they’re going to be auditing these components. Why don’t you come up with an audit as an association?”
Muliyil said it should be possible to come up with a general audit that will answer all the concerns of many different users of crops so farmers might have to fill out only a few forms.
Gordon Harrison, president of the Canadian National Millers Association and chair of the grains council’s post-farm food safety committee, said the council is developing an on-farm audit that various companies could use.
Neal Hardy, president of the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, said he doesn’t think farmers will be too upset by on-farm audits as long as they aren’t too time-consuming and are voluntary.
“More people are ready for it than you would expect,” said Hardy.
“The aggressive farmer today knows you have to work closely with the end user of the products.
“This will just become part of farming, and I think people are ready for it,” said Hardy.
