Grown with care
Wool is a great choice for brands seeking a naturally renewable, high performing material for their products. As demand and innovations with wool grow, we need to provide assurance of the way that our wool is produced and traceability back to farm so that brands can provide their customers and stakeholders with certainty of responsible sourcing practices.
In Aotearoa New Zealand we have one of the world’s first national assurance programmes for wool, the New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme (NZFAP). NZFAP is a voluntary nation-wide farm assurance programme. It demonstrates an authentic and independently verified best practice animal raising and production assurance standard to our international customers.
Wool produced and independently certified under this standard provides assurance that the animal health and welfare, biosecurity, origin and traceability are amongst the world’s best. It provides a brand confidence that their reputation is protected, quality is maintained through traceability, and that the attributes of the programme can be promoted to their customers.
For growers, NZFAP provides confidence that their reputation is safeguarded, quality of care is maintained through the value chain, and they can promote their responsible wool with pride.
All New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme certified wool is from livestock cared for under the five freedoms being:
- Free from discomfort
- Free from pain, injury and disease
- Free to behave naturally
- Free from fear and distress
- Free from thirst, hunger and malnutrition
Certified farmers are required to have an animal health management plan and meet New Zealand’s strict animal welfare regulations that exclude the use of mulesing.
New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme certified wool is from sheep raised in New Zealand on pasture-based farming systems.
Farmers are audited every three years by an independent audit and certification body against the standards.
Wool that is sold as being certified under the New Zealand Farm Assurance Programme has to go through facilities that have been audited to ensure the chain of custody is. This provides full traceability from export back to the farm.
The programme and independent audit body are under the government appointed ‘Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand’ responsible for providing accreditation, certification and inspection to ISO standard ISO/IEC17065.