Welcome to this website of VACQA - International!

 

VACQA - International is an organisation, based in different countries of Europe, which aims at the veterinary advice and coaching on quality assurance on dairy farms. Quality assurance in this sense comprises both food safety and public health issues, as well as cattle health and welfare issues.

Quality risk management is conducted through a HACCP-compatible approach to the dairy farm. One elementary step in this approach is that hazards as well as their associated risks need to be identified. From there onwards, further activities can be developed such as monitoring critical control points and points of particular attention, corrective and preventive measures, work instructions for different areas of the dairy farm, good dairy farm codes of practice, quality assurance records.

 

First, the current version consists of a series of SWOT-assessments for both adult dairy cows and replacement rearing. The objective of these SWOT-sheets is to detect the strong and the weak points on the dairy farm in the framework of a Quality Risk Management programme with regard to claw health, udder health, milk production & nutrition, herd fertility, and the 4 main periods in calf and heifer rearing; shortly to detect hazards and risks. SWOT-sheets concerning the clusters Welfare & Cow comfort and Public health & Food safety will be added to our site soon. Preferably the SWOT sheets should not be used as a stand-alone product, but can be nicely implemented in already existing Herd Health & Production Management programmes.

Summarizing can be concluded that it comes down to revealing (farm-specific) hazards and risks from each cluster. Based on the outcomes of the SWOT-assessment, priorities for action on the shorter and the longer term can be identified, and corrective and preventive measures developed. These SWOT-assessment sheets can also be used to detect trends, for example after advice has been given, in order to determine whether progress has been made over time. The outcomes can be used to support on-farm Qualtiy Risk Management as well as operational  or strategic management indirectly.

 

Secondly, this website comprises the different examples and templates of the various components of a HACCP-compatible handbook for dairy farms. You can download these for your own activities in the field.

Thirdly, there is a list of suggested literature for those who like to get more acquainted with the principles and execution of veterinary Herd Health and HACCP-like applications on dairy farms. We advise you to read more on implementing Quality Risk Management programmes and to get trained first, before using these elements in practice.

Suggested instructions

 

 

Articles on-farm HACCP

Boersema et al., 2008

 

We hope that the veterinary advisory activities on dairy farms will be strongly supported by the tools you are here provided with.

 

We wish you good luck and fun!!

 

João Cannas da Silva; Jos Noordhuizen; Paulo Gingão; Siert-Jan Boersema; Ana Vieira