Animal Welfare
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Arlagården
Arlagården is the farm management programme that every one of Arla's farmer owners must follow. It sets out one shared standard for how milk is produced on the cooperative's farms, from the quality and safety of the milk itself to how cows and calves are cared for, how farms protect nature and cut their climate footprint, and how the people who live and work on a dairy farm are treated. Arla introduced the programme on 1 October 2003, three years after the merger of Swedish Arla and Danish MD Foods, to give farmers in both countries the same rules and to show retailers and shoppers how the milk behind Arla products is made. It spelled out which requirements came from the law and which went further, such as rules on feed, hygiene and milk tank alarms, and around 60 specially trained quality advisers visited every supplying farm. The programme later spread to Germany, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom, where it added 16 standards on top of Red Tractor, including tighter rules on antibiotic use. In 2020 Arlagården was rebuilt around results rather than prescribed solutions. Farmers now report on their own farms through regular digital self-assessments, while the inspection company SGS carries out on-farm audits for every Arla farmer against the same checklist: a basic audit at least every three years, attention audits when data points to a problem and spot checks at 48 hours' notice. A data layer, Arlagården Plus, collects detailed information on herds and individual cows, so Arla can document animal welfare and sustainability across thousands of farms in seven countries.
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