Did the standards prompt you to make some changes in your farming practices?
It’s impossible to prepare for a certification process as thorough as the ICFA one without making many changes to the way in which our farming practices were done. The majority of these were fine tuning to prevailing systems and processes but some necessitated a degree of commitment and effort to demonstrate that the required outcomes were being achieved.
What do you expect from the standards implementation?
Assurance that in meeting the certification standards our farms have access for our skins to the premium markets in the World and that in turn, customers can assure their end-users that the skins were sourced from livestock produced ethically and humanely.
Why did you consider the need for certification?
At the farm level we sought the comfort of knowing that the management systems, the Quality Assurance processes and the welfare compliance standards are maximizing our opportunity to produce healthy, stress-free animals which is a highly desirable scenario within an intensive livestock operation. At the customer level, buyers of Padenga skins are assured that they are sourcing from a farm that produces livestock ethically and humanely and to standards consistent with best practice in other forms of domestic livestock. Simply put, the certification process is a symbol of good husbandry, environmental and social practices.
How long did it take to obtain the certification?
As part of the ICFA executive committee I was fortunate to be part of the standards review process so I had some idea of what was coming and was able to start preparing our operations for compliance. Under the direction of our Quality Assurance Manager we were amongst the earliest group of ICFA members certified back in March 2020.
What did you consider the most demanding in the certification process?
Three aspects were probably the most demanding:
a) Ensuring that all operational processes on the farms were properly documented as comprehensive and realistic standard operating procedures. In our business, SOP’s are not just documents produced to fulfil certification requirements but are living, breathing protocols that are applied day in and day out and are subject to constant QA review.
b) The appropriate documentation of non-conformities and corrective action reports such that they provide a meaningful audit trail of incidents where operational processes went wrong and of the actions taken to resolve them. This is a critical part of our management systems but it took time and discipline to get it firmly entrenched within the business.
c) Environmental compliance was challenging as Zimbabwe has very stringent standards defined by statute. We therefore had to change some of our operational processes to achieve initial local compliance and then follow that up with longer term and more complex solutions.
What is the recent achievement that you are the proudest of?
We have recently (December 2024) completed a wastewater treatment plant designed to local water discharge standards that is a big step forward in highlighting our commitment to environmental and sustainability compliance.
Do you already return some benefits from the standards implementation or the certification?
I believe that simply being able to continue selling skins to European premium customers is a positive outcome from the certification process. Operational steps that we implemented to reduce the organic loading in our wastewater as part of our environmental compliance initiatives materially reduced our feed bill and improved our feed conversion rates yielding better efficiencies. This was an unexpected outcome that we hadn’t anticipated. International Financial Reporting Standards that publicly listed companies are required to uphold are now placing significance emphasis on environmental and sustainability reporting and compliance and we are as a consequence of the ICFA standards well prepared for this additional obligation which would have been onerous and costly had we to start from scratch.
Are there fields on which you consider that the standards could be more demanding?
I don’t see an immediate requirement for more demanding standards but I do believe we need to ensure that there is consistency in the manner in which the standards are evaluated at audit so there is genuinely a commonality in welfare and husbandry outcomes across all production operations.
