Animal Welfare

As a result of us paying more, we insist on higher quality and welfare standards. We require high Animal Welfare standards, such as Mobility scoring (unique to us) to ensure our milk is the one highest quality in the industry. In layman's terms, this is the same as our cows having monthly MOT's.

We have our own animal welfare codes of practice for every livestock species, which are independently audited for us. Plus a team of dedicated Agriculture Managers who ensure that these policies are complied with. Farming practices used in the production of over 95% of the milk in the UK is also governed by stringent legislation through farm assurance schemes, such as the Red Tractor.

All of Tesco’s dairy producers must have a written health and welfare plan to help review their approach to animal health on a regular basis and demonstrate commitment to planned and preventative health schemes. Farm hygiene and management programmes such as vaccination, appropriate animal husbandry and care should be used, as relevant, to reduce disease and the need for therapeutic intervention.

For mobility scoring and encouraging all our dairy farmers to milk record - as we believe it to be best practice, and allows us full traceability of the quality of our milk supply - we won the RSPCA Business Innovation Award 2007.