Top tips to prepare for your NZFAP audit

We’re seeing an increase in the volume of non-conformances for restricted veterinary medicine records and animal health plan requirements for New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme (NZFAP) audits. When farmers don’t sufficiently meet a requirement, they’re issued with a Corrective Action Request (CAR) which must be closed out within the required timeframe. To minimise CARs from arising, it’s important farmers are well prepared for their audit and understand the requirements of the programme.

We’ve outlined two common non-conformances and provided recommendations on how to best prepare for your audit in these areas.

NZFAP requirement 4.3, Animal Health – RVM treatment records

Restricted veterinary medicines (RVM) must be obtained from a New Zealand registered veterinarian and used in accordance with the veterinarian’s instructions. If RVM treatment has been administered, you can contact your vet for the record or keep them in a file to ensure they’re easily accessible for your auditor to verify. Your vet is required to store records for seven years after they’ve been issued, so you can easily request these through them.

Leading up to your NZFAP audit, a template is available in our ANZCO Records Book for you to determine when animal treatments are RVMs. Please email the QA Team (email QAadmin@anzccofoods.com) to request a records book.

NZFAP requirement 4.3, Animal Health – Animal health plans

You must annually prepare an animal health plan for all animals on-farm, including dogs, to successfully complete a NZFAP audit. It must be implemented or supervised by a competent person, such as a vet or animal health advisor. Elements that you could record in an animal health plan include:

• Targets: liveweights/BCS
• Monitoring: liveweights/BCS
• Animal husbandry/events
• Tests required
• Remedy/preventative animal health treatments
• Other animal health events applicable to your farming system

Leading up to your NZFAP audit, a template is available in our ANZCO Records Book and shown below on how you can record an animal health plan. Please contact the QA Team (email QAadmin@anzccofoods.com) to request a records book.

Ovine plan (download here)

Bovine plan (download here)