Grain store hygiene, Red Tractor rules and feed business registration

Registration comes before assurance

Before any scheme gets involved, there is a statutory step most arable farms are inside. Government guidance is that businesses that make, market or use animal feed need to be registered and approved as animal feed businesses, and the activities listed include arable farms growing, using or selling crops for feed use, and storage of feed and feed products. Registration is by application to the local authority for the area the establishment operates in, which may be Trading Standards or the Environmental Health Service, and businesses need to be aware of the Feed Hygiene Regulation 183/2005 (gov.uk, starting an animal feed business).

If you are storing grain that will be sold for feed, check your registration position before you check anything else. It is free to get right and awkward to be found without.

Red Tractor and the loaded grain store

The Red Tractor Combinable Crops and Sugar Beet standards cover the store as well as the crop. The one most people ask about is baiting a store with grain in it. Standard CR.VC.3 permits toxic rodent baits in grain stores while combinable crops are being stored only where a set of criteria are met (Red Tractor, vermin control):

• There is a documented need for toxic bait to prevent or treat a mouse infestation.
• Only gel or paste products may be used within the store. Loose grain baits, pasta and wax blocks and gel sachets are not permitted.
• Toxic pastes and gels are placed only in lockable, secure, identifiable bait boxes secured to the building, with the positions recorded on a store map.
• Farm personnel doing the baiting must have read and understood Red Tractor's guidance or training document, and the training must be documented, unless a professional contractor is used.

Read the current standards on Red Tractor's own site before you rely on any summary, including this one: the scheme updates its standards on its own cycle, and the version that counts is the one your assessor is holding (Red Tractor crops standards).

Store preparation, and why it is a build decision

AHDB's position on store hygiene is that insects and mites are most likely to be introduced from the store structure and equipment, that even small quantities of residual grain provide a food source allowing pest problems to build, and that cleaning alone does not eliminate all pests in an empty store, nor will pesticide treatment. Their answer is an integrated pest management approach: prevent, monitor and detect, then control (AHDB, how to clean and prepare a grain store).

Two of AHDB's pre-harvest checklist items are effectively specification decisions: inspect and repair areas of potential water ingress such as external fans, guttering and roofs, and check the store is proofed against rodent and bird entry. Both are far cheaper designed in than retrofitted, which is why they appear in our cost-driver table rather than in a housekeeping list.

What to build in rather than bolt on

• Cleanability. Smooth surfaces, sealed joints and no ledges that collect grain residue. Every place grain sits is a pest reservoir.
• Rodent and bird proofing. Doors, eaves, vents and duct entries, specified at build.
• Water tightness. Roof, gutters and around fan housings, which is where ingress starts.
• Separation. Somewhere for chemicals, fuel and machinery that is not the grain store, because contamination risk assessments look hard at exactly this.
• Monitoring access. Safe places to take temperature and moisture readings without climbing on the heap.
• Records. A store map for bait points, a cleaning record, and monitoring readings. Assurance is evidence, not intention.

This page summarises published scheme and government guidance and is not compliance advice. Standards and guidance change: read the current Red Tractor standards and the current gov.uk guidance before relying on either, and speak to your certification body about your own store.