The Agricultural Industries Confederation (AIC) has revised the AIC Code of Practice for Making Safe Deliveries of Animal Feed to Farms to an online version that can be found on the AIC website.

The code, endorsed by the Farm Safety Partnership was originally developed in support of a UK-wide feed industry initiative started in 2012 with the objective of securing significant improvements in the safety of delivery drivers who are working for, or on behalf of, animal feed companies.

The Farm Safety Partnership is a collaboration of organisations including NFU, NFU Mutual, HSE and CLA with a responsibility to show industry leadership by promoting safe systems of work within all sectors of agriculture.

Commenting on the update, AIC Technical Manager David Moss said, "The updated Code of Practice is designed to give advice to farmers, feed manufacturers and feed merchants, on safe deliveries to the farm and is primarily targeted at deliveries of animal feed products. However any delivery made to a farm customer's premises should be planned to ensure that, following a risk assessment of the site, which includes consideration of the product being delivered, the vehicle to be used, and the manufacturers product safety information, a safe system of work is implemented to manage the delivery".

The agricultural sector has the worst fatal accident rate of any major industrial sector. The UK animal feed industry is committed to playing their part in helping to reduce this unacceptable situation.

"With fewer people present on farms, delivery drivers are often working alone making deliveries out of normal working hours" adds Mr Moss. "As an industry we need to do everything we can to ensure anyone working on farms are doing so in as safe a way as possible and this code of practice provides a well-tested blue print to ensure risk is managed in a sensible way".   

The code is easy to follow and provides clear areas for consideration and action covering all types of deliveries to farm:

"The code supports the UK wide initiative of the Farm Safety Partnership and I'm delighted to say that it is now accessible through the AIC Website "concludes Mr Moss.

For further information or any questions please contact AIC Technical Manager David Moss at david.moss@agindustries.org.uk.