The Agricultural Supply Chain Adjudicator (ASCA) is urging anyone who has queries about the implementation of the Fair Dealing Obligations (Pigs) (FDOP) regulations to get in touch with it.
ASCA oversees the Fair Dealing Obligations (FDO) regulations that are currently in place for the dairy and pig supply chains and are being developed for other sectors.
Addressing the NPA’s Pig Industry Group at its latest meeting in London last week, a member of the ASCA team explained how experience with the dairy regulations showed the ‘success of good faith early engagement’ to address issues before they became more serious.
The full implementation of the FDO (Pigs) (FDOP) regulations in August coincided with significant turmoil in the market and has added to the confusion for some producers.
A survey of NPA members in the run up to the August 13 deadline for compliance showed, at the time, that only 6% of respondents had an FDOP-compliant contract in place. Nearly two-thirds were aware of the regulations but did not have a contract in place and 22% said they were ‘not very aware’ of FDOP and had not discussed it with their customer.
The NPA coordinated a roundtable event in early September that enabled producers to discuss, anonymously, any issues they had with the regulations with ASCA and Defra officials.
“My key message today is that our office is really keen to chat. If in doubt, please, get in touch – it is entirely free and anyone can contact us at any time,” the ASCA representative told PIG.
“We are trying to foster good relations with the industry and our experience with the dairy sector shows that where you get the engagement, it will often remove the need for a formal complaint.”
He said there had been good a good reaction to the recent ASCA survey with more than 100 responses. “The key challenge is making people aware of how they can contact us,” he said.
He outlined the two main ways to contact ASCA:
- The ASCA office’s main email is: asca@defra.gov.uk.
- There is a separate address for anyone who wishes to contact it in confidence: asca-in-confidence@defra.gov.uk
Industry support package
PIG gave its backing to the NPA’s proposed pig industry support package, which was outlined by chief executive Lizzie Wilson before being submitted to Defra later in the week.
The proposed package contains a mix of short-term financial aid and longer-term measures to deliver future stability.