Muller announces new premium for health and welfare standards initiative
Muller Direct farmers will be offered an additional payment worth 0.5ppl for adhering to a new initiative looking to improve herd health and welfare
Alex Black
Muller Direct farmers who commit to initiatives designed to continually improve herd health and welfare standards were to be offered an additional payment worth 0.5ppl.
The premium will be introduced on January 1 2019, with payment based on three initiatives.
Premium
It will be paid in a lump sum in January 2020 to qualifying Muller Direct farmers.
Read More
The 3 herd health initiatives
- Muller Direct Farm Insight Programme: An on-farm health and welfare assessment which aims to provide bespoke advice, benchmarking and highlight potential savings, managed by AB Sustain
- Muller Direct Antibiotic Programme: Designed to manage and reduce unnecessary use of antibiotics
- The National Johne’s Management Plan: Aiming to control and eradicate Johne’s disease
Rob Hutchison, Muller milk supply director, said it was ‘another means’ to help farmers build better, more sustainable businesses, securing long term success and benefitting the dairy supply chain as a whole.
Commitment
“We know that Muller Direct farmers are deeply committed to the health of their herds. Many have already taken important steps to address the unnecessary use of antibiotics, manage Johne’s and look for ways to improve overall health and welfare.”
He added he was confident the benefits of participating would be significant.
“For Muller the aggregated, anonymised data from the herd health initiatives will provide evidence of improved herd health and welfare in our direct farm pool which we will be able to share with our customers who have no direct relationship with farmers.”
It follows other initiatives including a fixed price contract option, and opportunities to access dairy futures markets.
Most Recent
Farmers Guardian and FarmersGuardian.com are trademarks of Farmers Guardian Ltd, a subsidiary of AgriBriefing Ltd.
All material published on FGInsight.com and FarmersGuardian.com is copyrighted © 2020 by AgriBriefing Limited. All rights reserved.
