Signage on Farm Gates Does Not Require Personal Details – O’leary

IFA National Dairy Committee Chairman Sean O’Leary has clarified that Restricted Access, Biosecurity and Farm Safety Signage required on dairy farms under the Bord Bia Sustainable Dairy Assurance Scheme (SDAS, the dairy quality assurance scheme) did not need to bear the farmer’s personal details.

“Personal details such as phone numbers or names on signage are not only not required under the Bord Bia SDAS, they are a wholly unnecessary security risk. We raised this with Bord Bia some months back, and they have contacted signage manufacturers and sellers to ask them to change their signage design to not include blank spaces into which farmers might feel obliged to fill such information,” Mr O’Leary said.

“However, as some signage has already been purchased, we have been contacted by a number of farmers to highlight this issue. Farmers should be aware that they do not have to, and for security reasons should not, fill in the spaces on such signage. This will not affect their auditing score, as the presence of the signage in the appropriate places on farm is all that is required,” he said.

“We would further urge all signage manufacturers and suppliers to remove the older signage designs from circulation, to avoid any confusion,” he concluded.