Quality is a keyword in animal production. Next to product quality, process quality has also become relevant for dairy farmers. Issues like food safety, public health, animal health and welfare are determined by the conditions of the production process. To address these, he EU has issued the General Food Law (178-2002) and the Hygiene directives (EC 852/853/854-2004) dealing with the forenamed domains with the aim to protect consumers. The suggestion was also made by the EU issues are structure, organisation, planning, formalisation and demonstrability, which can also be found in the HACCP concept.

This book addresses Quality Risk Management through applying the HACCP-like concept. First, the assessment of strong and weak points on a dairy farm are dealt with, which is useful for farm inspection and herd health programmes. Then, the 12-steps for developing a HACCP plan are followed through the various chapters. Many examples and elaborations are given. An example farm, FX, is introduced to show how the different elements may look in reality. At the end of the book characteristics of entrepreneur-like dairy farmers are given and ompared to strong and weak points of cattle practitioners. Practitioners may conclude how to better serve this type of farmer. Communication plays a paramount role. Finally, several general issues are addressed: economics, integrating classical herd health with quality risk management programmes.

The aim of this book is to give practical guidelines and examples fo dairy farmers, cattle practitioners and extension people, who desire to jointly develop and implement a HACCP-based quality risk management programme.

Content - List of abbreviations, Preface, Chapter 1. Introduction, Chapter 2. Assessment of strengths and weaknesses, Chapter 3. Good Dairy Farming codes of practice, Chapter 4. The HACCP-concept, the 7 principles and 12 steps (general issues), Chapter 5. Flow diagrams of the production process, Chapter 6. Identification of hazards and evaluation of risks, Chapter 7. Critical Control Points (CCP) and Points of Particular Attention (POPA): their standards &  tolerances or targets, their monitoring, and corrective measures, Chapter 8. Support programmes in a HACCP-based Quality Risk Management programme, Chapter 9. Documentation in HACCP-like Quality Risk Management programmes, Chapter 10. Validation & verification of the HACCP-based Quality Risk Management programme, Chapter 11. Application of the HACCP principles to multifunctional farms open to the general public, Chapter 12. Application of the HACCP principles to milking goat farms in France, Chapter 13.  Veterinary advice to entrepreneur- like dairy farmers regarding Quality Risk Management, Chapter 14.  Communication in the veterinary advisory practice: practical application of behavioural economics and communication skills, Chapter 15. Final remarks, Literature references,  Acknowledgements, Index