A TC, which includes a site tour, assesses the systems in place to ensure that the product/s being sold with a Red Tractor claim are eligible to carry the claim. These assessments are vital for ensuring buyers and consumers trust the Red Tractor logo and market recognition for Red Tractor assured producers.
Licensees can receive a Traceability Challenge twice a year, once a year or biennually depending on their risk in order to verify that Red Tractor claimed products are eligible to carry the claim and are traceable through each stage of production back to the British assured farm or farms of origin. Where a site is a member of the Red Tractor Meat & Poultry Processing Scheme (as their licence eligibility criteria), the site receives less Traceability Challenges to a comparative site who is not a member of our scheme.
Licensees may also receive audits from other schemes, customers (retail) and the government (FSA) – these are not related to Red Tractor audits or Traceability Challenges. Traceability Challenges are different to other factory scheme audits. They are not full system food safety audits and, therefore, do not duplicate the work undertaken as part of these third-party certification audits, such as BRCGS.
Traceability challenges are not assessments against a defined set of standards, however, non-conformances can be raised against a list of areas.
The non-conformance checklist used during traceability challenges can be found using the following link: