By: Jamie Smith
Consumers want more information than ever. They want to know where their meat came from, how the animal was raised, and everything in between. Thus – the ever complicated world of farm audits was born, creating a series of hoops for producers to jump through. You may think that if you are treating your animals well and providing safe and healthy pork, you will undoubtedly pass any audit with flying colors. Unfortunately, that is not always the case. Preparing your farm for an audit requires that specific documentation and protocols are set in place and the truth is that getting your barn prepared for an audit can be extremely confusing and stressful. Brian Stevens, President of Big Stone Marketing, could see the farm audit challenges coming down the road and so he engaged Dr. Carissa Odland, Pipestone’s veterinarian in charge of animal welfare programs, to help develop the program we now call “Verified Swine Solutions or VSS”. They hired me as the first step in developing a program that would help producers since I had experience in this area from my previous employer.
Before coming to work for Big Stone Marketing, I worked as a certified auditor for one of the major packers, managing their Animal Welfare program. Dr. Odland has been very proactive and involved with developing animal care programs, internal audits and third party farm audits for the Pipestone System sow farms for 5 years and so we both have extensive experience we use while running the Verified Swine Solutions Program.
The mission of VSS is to help producers develop an extensive on-farm animal care program (including all SOP’s and necessary documentation) and ultimately be prepared for the on-farm audit that their packer requires. It’s hard to know all the in’s and out’s when you have never been through an audit before, but we are here to help because we know exactly what questions the auditor will ask as well as what answers they are looking for. Verified Swine Solutions comes to your site with all of the documentation, signs, and protocols you will need to be audit ready! Our job is to make this simple, straight forward and stress free for the owners, contract growers and caretakers.
One of the requirements many packers have is something called “daily observations,” which is basically having barn caretaker’s record every time they enter a barn. Many producers do this by simply writing on a sheet of paper. The problem with this is that too often the paper can get lost or too dirty to read, and if you do still have that piece of paper at the end of the week, you have to manually enter it into a spreadsheet which takes time and patience! Having seen this issue over and over again, we decided to come up with an easier way to record your daily observations.
VSS has an app that uses a code specific to each barn and user logins to identify each caretaker. We have created technology to utilize a smart phone or tablet device where caretakers can enter their daily observation records. You scan a code placed at the barn’s door with your phone or tablet. This code will automatically register to the site including the caretaker’s name, date and time. Required fields to adhere to packer compliance include temperature, number of deads, and number euthanized. However, there are additional fields available that may be of benefit when it comes to making business decisions for your farm. Examples of these are average weight of deads, water usage fields, and running inventory.
Now here comes the easy part! After you enter the information and hit submit on your handheld device, all of this information is automatically entered into a database you can access at the VSS website. All of the information is easily accessed and downloaded in the case you are audited, or you can use to analyze your farms performance.
Using an app on a smart phone or tablet device may seem a little intimidating, but I ensure you it is very user friendly and easy to use. We meet with producers in person that are interested in using the app and walk them through the process.
For more questions about Verified Swine Solutions or the app, feel free to contact me at jasmith@bigstonemarketing.com or call me at 507.215.3799.
