Here you’ll find your online Farm Dairy Assessment checklist, short videos, and FAQs to help you prepare for your annual farm dairy assessment and meet MPI requirements.
Summary:
Prepare for your Farm Dairy Assessment which is required by MPI by using our online checklist, videos, and FAQs to stay compliant and confident.
Why is the Farm Dairy Assessment important?
In New Zealand, dairy farms must operate under a risk management programme registered with MPI in order to produce milk for manufacture and sale.
This RMP ensures that products are safe, true to label, and fit for purpose. As part of the RMP, an annual farm dairy assessment by an MPI-recognised Dairy Assessor is required to meet regulatory obligations.
Dive into the detail with a snapshot of what you will be assessed on and find out what to expect if any risks have been identified.
Every dairy farm in New Zealand must have procedures in place to manage food safety risks, these are commonly referred to as Red-pages, as required by the Ministry of Primary Industries (MPI), to prove our food products are safe and fit for consumption.
We’ve made a few improvements to make the farmer experience simpler and faster. You’ll now see a shorter, easier to navigate FSPP with a refreshed layout — one form instead of four. We’ve streamlined the questions and added the option to upload photos, so you can personalise the form to your farm.
What hasn’t changed:
- Pre-population of last season available to reduce rework.
- Food safety expectations remain the same.
- The form still needs to be reviewed, updated, and submitted before supply starts.
Time saving tip:
Save time by using last season’s data to pre-populate this season’s form. If you are new to the farm, contact the owner before starting and ask them to begin the form so pre-population can be enabled.
Save time at your assessment by tracking and managing requirements for your Farm Dairy Assessment using the online checklist.
Get ready for your assessment
Video: What is the Farm Dairy Assessment checklist?
Get familiar with the online checklist and learn where to find key information about your upcoming Farm Dairy Assessment.
Video: How to use FDA Checklist
Discover how to tick tasks off the list, and how integrations can feed in your information – ready for your assessor to review.
Video: How to upload files
Walk through how to upload a file to your checklist – ready for your assessor to review, so you can save time on the day.
Frequently asked questions
- The online checklist is a one-stop shop to help you prepare for your Farm Dairy Assessment.
- It’s personalised to your farm, so you can see what information we already have for you all in one place, and you can tick tasks off as you go.
- If you upload documents to the checklist 7 days in advance of a visit, your assessor will check them before they see you on-farm, saving you time on the day.
- You can also see the time, date and name of your assessor (if your assessment has been scheduled).
- The online checklist is just for you, to help you prepare – it doesn’t replace other records you need to submit later in the year, and your assessor can’t see it (only files you upload can be seen by your assessor).
Anyone who has a Farm Source log-in, and has access to your farm's data.
- The checklist is for farmers who have an assessment coming up – if QCONZ has scheduled your assessment, your checklist will display the date and time of your assessment, as well as your assessor’s name.
- If your assessment date and time is blank, this is because QCONZ has yet to schedule your assessment. If you’re the Primary Business Contact or Primary On Farm Contact, you’ll receive an email before your assessment to let you know it’s scheduled.
- If you’ve already had your assessment this year, your assessment will be marked as complete. Next season, the checklist will refresh with new details once your next assessment is scheduled – we’ll let you know when it’s ready for you.
- If you’ve already had your assessment this year, your assessment will be marked as complete.
- Next season, the checklist will refresh with new details once your next assessment is scheduled – we’ll let you know when it’s ready for you.
- The checklist is your tool to help you prepare for the assessment – it doesn’t replace your Farm Dairy Assessment, and your assessor can’t see it (only files you upload can be seen by your assessor).
- When you tick an item off the list, it just means it’s ready to be assessed.
- If you’ve had excellent performance during previous assessments, or if you’ve connected your data, you might qualify for a faster assessment. Read more about this here.
- On the overview page of the checklist (bottom left), you’ll see a section outlining if you’ve qualified for faster assessment in any areas.
- You can also make your assessment faster by loading documents into the checklist at least 7 days ahead of your assessment – your assessor can then check it before they visit you on farm.
- On the overview page of the checklist (bottom), you’ll see a section that lists all the data integrations we have for you.
- You’ll also see any integrations listed against each relevant task on the checklist.
- At the moment, we can only accept PDF files up to 6MB each in size. We’ll make more file types available in the future.
- If you aren’t able to convert a document to a PDF format, just take a photo of the file in the Dairy Diary app using the photo evidence feature (under Receipts and Dockets). Any information stored in the app will flow through to your checklist as a PDF. You can find more information on this feature here.
Reach out to your local Farmer Support & Relationship Advisor, you can find their contact details in your My Co-op App or by calling 0800 65 65 68.
We’re working to make things easier and simpler when it comes to farm records and reporting. Find out more about our Compliance Simplification.
Download the checklist
If you'd like to download a copy of the checklist and get prepared ahead of your assessment, you can do this here.