Westland Milk fails to sign up environmental standards

12 July 2013

Westland Milk Products fails to sign up environmental standards

Fish & Game cannot fathom Westland Milk Product’s (WMP) decision to be friends' of the 'Nationwide Sustainable Dairying Water Accord' rather than signatories, with its imposed commitments to its farmer shareholders.

Dean Kelly manager West Coast Fish & Game says “The Accord itself has been criticised for not going far enough yet WMP have refused to sign up as they believe their suppliers cannot even meet these minimum standards.” The Accord was designed was to encourage dairy farmers to perform to a minimum standard that the public expects when using public resources such as water.

Westland Milk Products has recently moved into Canterbury with a significant share of their milk produced in that region. Suppliers of WMP will now have lax environmental constraints compared to their counterparts supplying other companies.

The dairy producer has stated that they have their own code of practice that they require all shareholders to comply with. If that is the case “then a copy of the independently audited report on the environmental performance of these farmers to back up these claims would be welcome.” adds Mr Kelly.

It was one of the failings of the self audit process in the last Accord when the former Ministry of Agriculture completed an audit of farm compliance and found the admirable figures being produced by the industry were completely fallacious. Claims by self audited farms of 84% exclusion of stock from waterways were actually found to be 42% in the independent audit.

“The independent audit of progress towards the target is part of the new Accord but WMP will not be required to assess their farmers as they are only ‘friends’ not signatories to the agreement.”

All other signatories have been progressing well in getting cows out of waterways and Mr Kelly believes “WMP have dropped the ball when they realised the rest of the country was intending to get the majority of cows out of waterways greater than 1m wide by March next year and total exclusion by 2017.”

"This was the time for WMP to step up; after over 20 years of education and encouragement of their shareholder farmers and WMP have failed to 'walk the talk'."

ENDS

© Scoop Media