On Tuesday 23rd October, we were pleased to welcome Jo Sterritt and Joe Seddon to our Stapleton site, where they presented the team with a plaque in recognition of Dovecote Park’s status as an FDQ approved Welfare at the Time of Killing (WATOK) training centre.

We were established as a training centre in 2016, giving us the ability to train our own staff on site, and allowing us to move away from relying on external bodies. Further assessment in May and August saw us awarded Green status, receiving excellent feedback from FDQ. We were also certified to train individuals from other businesses on site. FDQ are a specialist food Awarding Body and approved End-Point Assessment Organisation. As part of skills charity, the Food and Drink Training and Education Council (ftc), they have a long association with the meat industry. As well as being the leading provider of the WATOK qualification they were also responsible for bringing the Butcher Standard Apprenticeship to market, since hailed by government as an exemplar apprenticeship programme. Meat industry body, the Institute of Meat, also sits within the ftc umbrella organisation.

FDQ’s visit was an opportunity for the employees to receive a special thanks for their hard work in ensuring that the awarding body’s standards were upheld and that Dovecote Park were awarded green status and recognised as an exemplary business in this arena.

The WATOK team whom this certificate recognised are as follows: Jamie Smith (Trainer, Skellingthorpe), Scott Forman (Trainer, Stapleton), Daryl Smith (Assessor, Skellingthorpe), Mark Wigglesworth (Assessor, Stapleton), Damien McKnight (Internal Quality Assurance Coordinator)

Jo Sterritt, FDQ Quality Director stated, ‘The Dovecote Park team worked extremely hard to achieve their ‘Green’ centre quality rating and the sense of pride they felt at this achievement was evident to all. It was great to see the whole team brought together to celebrate this achievement, and on behalf of FDQ I’d like to congratulate them on this well deserved recognition of their efforts.’…….insert quotation here…..’

We were delighted to make contact with FDQ once again, and proud to display their recognition at both our sites! This most recent certification marks yet another step in our ongoing commitment to being an industry leader in promoting animal welfare standards. Once again, enormous credit is due to all the abattoir and training staff mentioned above for their hard work in making this certification happen – sincere thanks to all!