Gill wants tractor banner on all farms
5 October 2000
Gill wants tractor banner on all farms
By Isabel Davies
HOIST a British Farm Standard banner in your field, National Farmers Union president Ben Gill has urged all members.
At NFU Council on Thursday (05 October), Mr Gill called on farmers to do their bit to promote the little red tractor logo, which denotes hygiene, welfare and environment standards.
“Farmers have got control of prime advertising sites and youve got to make the most of this opportunity,” he said.
His call was supported by Richard Haddock, a leading light in the Farmers for Action group and previously a strong critic of the logo.
At one FFA demonstration a replica of the logo – and an effigy of Mr Gill – were put through a harvester and shredded into a trailer.
But now Mr Haddock challenged every member of Council to put up a banner so they could show they were leading by example.
“I was a critic of the logo at the launch but we have to make it work. If it fails we wont be able to make another work again”, he said.
FFA had claimed the logo misled consumers as it could be used by foreign producers meeting UK standards.
Terrig Morgan, chairman of the Unions milk committee expressed his disappointment that milk was still unable to carry the tractor logo.
He blamed milk processors for holding things up, claiming they had no will to get the mark on to packs because it was assertive branding from producers.
As he gave an update on progress of the mark, Simon Lunniss, NFU head of crops, said 400 companies were now licensed to use it.
The union was anxious to roll out the logo on to primary products as quickly as possible he said.
Work was also going forward on processed products, but was taking longer than liked because of problems caused by mixed ingredients.
“We desperately want to do it quickly, but we desperately want to do it right”, he said