Governance

Freedom Food Limited (trading as RSPCA Assured) is non-profit making and is a registered charity (in England and Wales charity number 1059879 and in Scotland SCO38199). It is also a registered company (number 2723670).

It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the RSPCA and is governed by eight trustees - four RSPCA trustees and four non-executive directors.

This privacy policy sets out how Freedom Food Limited ('we', 'our' or 'us') treats the personal information that we collect, use and disclose.

We may update this privacy policy from time-to-time. It will be located on our websites, and is also available by contacting our data protection officer by email or at the address provided later on this page.

The types of information we collect from you and hold will vary depending on your dealings with us. This information is likely to include any or all of the following:

• name, address, email address and phone number
• job title, department, company and industry sector you work in
• financial and credit card information
• technical information, including the internet protocol (IP) address used to connect your computer to the internet. Please see our website and cookie privacy policy later on this page.

How we collect information from you

Generally, we collect information directly from you, such as in postal or telephone correspondence or via email.

We may also receive information about you from other sources such as:

• our certificating body
• third party service providers we work closely with including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers and credit reference agencies.

Legal basis  

We will only collect, use or disclose your personal information where we have a legal basis for doing so:

• where you have given us your consent
• To perform a contract between Freedom Food Limited and yourself; or between Freedom Food Limited and your employer

• In order to comply with any legal obligations
• where it is in our legitimate interest as a supplier of farm assurance or processor/packer certification (for example providing you with customer service, or protecting the security of our systems).

How your personal information is used

We will use the information collected from you for the following purposes:

• To fulfil our obligations under any contracts we may have with you, and to provide you with information about any service or agreement you request from us
• to notify you about changes to our service or agreements.

How your personal information is stored

We securely store your personal information physically or digitally. Our physical records are held in various secure commercial data storage units and we secure the digital data on computer servers in a controlled, secure environment, protected from unauthorized access, use or disclosure.

Where we provide personal information to third parties, we use contractual measures to protect this information.  

Additionally, we take reasonable steps to destroy personal information when we no longer need it.  

We will ask you for your explicit consent before capturing and processing your personal data, wherever we need to. By providing consent you are giving us permission to

process your personal data specifically for the purposes identified.

You may withdraw consent at any time by contacting our data protection officer using the contact details below:

Operations Manager
RSPCA Assured
Wilberforce Way
Southwater
West Sussex
RH13 9RS

help@rspcaassured.org.uk

Disclosure of your personal data to third parties

We may also disclose your personal information to third parties who work with us in our business to provide, promote or improve the service or agreements you have requested or are interested in, such as:

• our certificating body
• The RSPCA
• third-party service providers
• national regulators and accreditation bodies
• marketing agencies
• consultants and professional advisers
• Service providers who help us manage our relationships with our customers and our marketing channels (such as Mendix, WorldPay).

We may disclose your personal information to third parties if we are under a duty to disclose or share your personal information in order to meet any legal obligation.

Retention of your personal data

Freedom Food retains personal information that you provide to us where we have an ongoing legitimate business need to do so (for example, as long as is required in order to contact you about services or agreements, or as needed to comply with our legal obligations).

When we have no ongoing legitimate business need to process your personal information, we will securely delete the information or anonymise it or, if this is not possible, then we will securely store your personal information and isolate it from any further processing until deletion is possible.

Your rights as a data subject

At any point while we are in possession of or processing your personal data, you, the data subject, have a number of rights such as the

right of access to your information; the right to amend or correct your personal information and the right to withdraw your consent for processing all or part of the personal information you provide to us. If you wish to exercise any of these rights, including withdrawal of your consent for us to process your data, you can do so by contacting our data protection officer using the contact details below. If a third party is involved in the processing of your personal data, we will pass on to them any of your requests arising from these rights.

Changes to our privacy policy

If we make any material changes to this privacy policy, we will post a notice on this website notifying users of the changes. In some cases, we also may send an email notifying users of the changes. You should check this website periodically to see if any

recent changes to this privacy policy have occurred.

Complaints

In the event that you wish to make a complaint about how your personal data is being processed by Freedom Food Limited (or third parties as described above), or how your complaint has been handled, you have the right to lodge a complaint directly with Freedom Food Limited’s data protection officer:

Operations Manager
RSPCA Assured
Wilberforce Way
Southwater
West Sussex
RH13 9RS

help@rspcaassured.org.uk

You can also lodge a complaint with the Supervisory Authority listed below:

Information Commissioner's Office
Wycliffe House
Water Lane
Wilmslow
Cheshire
SK8 5AF

www.ico.org.uk/global/contact-us
casework@ico.org.uk
Tel: 0303 123 1113

RSPCA Assured websites

We ensure your data is kept secure and respect the privacy of all visitors to our websites.

This privacy notice covers all website activity related to Freedom Food Limited and relates to our websites www.rspcaassured.org.uk and
www.berspcaassured.org.uk.  

Our website may also include links to other websites not owned, associated or managed by Freedom Food.

Whilst we try our best to only link to reputable websites, we cannot be held responsible for the privacy of information collected by sites not managed by us, nor can we accept responsibility or liability for them.

For this reason you should consult the privacy notice on any external website you visit before you submit any personal information.

The RSPCA has its own separate privacy policy which you can find here: 

The personal information we collect

We may collect personal information about you when you visit our websites or contact us online.

This can include information such as:

• your name, postal address and email address if you send us a question via our contact form
• your name, age, email address, postal address if you enter a competition
• your company name and RSPCA Assured membership number if you download the marketing toolkit.

We use this information solely for the purposes described above. We will store the information securely for two months before it is deleted.

Legal requirements

We may disclose your personal information when required to by law. We safeguard the sharing of such information by ensuring the request and disclosure are legally compliant.

Google Analytics

When someone visits www.rspcaassured.org.uk or 
www.berspcaassured.org.uk we use a third party service, Google Analytics, to collect standard internet log information and details of visitor behaviour patterns.

We do this to find out things such as how our website was accessed, and the number of visitors to the various parts of the site. This information is processed in a way which does not identify anyone.

We do not make, and do not allow Google Analytics to make, any attempt to find out the identities of those visiting our website. If we do want to collect personal information through our website, we will make this clear and explain what we will do with it.

We do not collect personal information about visitors to our websites unless there is a clear reason for doing so.

Google privacy information

Opt out of Google Analytics tracking

Cookies

We use cookies to help us make our website better. Cookies are small text files that sit on your device so that our website will remember you

To help us create a more effective website that reflects users’ needs, we use cookie files to collect and record information about how our site is used and collect your IP address (a number that identifies a specific compute or other internet device) for system administration and to report aggregated information.

For more information on cookie files and IP addresses, read our cookies policy (scroll right). By continuing to use our site, you agree to our use of cookies.

However, if you wish to restrict or block the cookies which are set by our websites, or indeed any other website, you can do this through your browser settings. The ‘help’ function within your browser should tell you how to do this.

Please be aware that restricting cookies may impact the functionality of some areas of our website.

Children’s personal information

We are committed to protecting the privacy of young people who contact us online or enter competitions via our website.

Our competitions may request specific information about the age or participants.

Where appropriate we will seek consent from a parent, guardian or carer before collecting information about young people under 16.

Access to your information

You have the right to see information we hold about you. If you would like to receive some or all of your personal information (called a Subject Access Request), please contact: Data protection compliance officer, RSPCA Assured/Freedom Food, RSPCA, Wilberforce Way, Southwater, Horsham, West Sussex RH13 9RS.

Please note the Freedom of Information Act (the ‘FoIA’) applies to public authorities and certain organisations that are listed in Schedule 1 of the FoIA. Freedom Food is not listed and thus has no formal obligations under the FoIA. However, we support transparency and will supply information where possible.

Cookie policy

When you visit our website, a cookie identifies and tracks your visit whilst collecting statistical information.

Cookies tell us the pages that have been visited and collect information about how many times certain pages have been visited.

The cookie has no way of identifying you, it doesn’t hold your personal data nor can it be used to retrospectively to track you.

Cookies help us to assess the effectiveness of our website and can provide useful information.

The cookies we use on www.rspcaassured.org.uk and 
www.berspcaassured.org.uk are listed below:

NextBubble - stops the ‘next page’ pop up bubble appearing once you have clicked on it

CookieAgreement - stops cookie consent box appearing once you have clicked on it

Google Analytics - names as they appear in your browser: _utma, _utmb, _utmc, _utmz.

These cookies are used to collect analytical information about how visitors use the RSPCA site. All information is collected in an anonymous form and includes statistics such as browser usage, new visitor numbers, response to marketing activity and donation amounts.

This information helps us to improve the website and your experience, and to make our marketing campaigns relevant.

Google privacy information

Opt out of Google Analytics tracking

Service providers

We use service providers (such as website hosting providers and web developers) to help us provide our websites.

We may give relevant persons within these service providers access to your personal information, but only to allow them to perform their services for us.

Job applicants

If you apply for a job with us, we’ll hold the personal information you provide to process your application.

We may undertake monitoring of recruitment statistics, in line with employment and data protection law. If we need to disclose information to a third party we will not do so without asking you beforehand unless the disclosure is required by law. For example, if we need to take up a reference or obtain

‘disclosure’ from the Disclosure and Barring Service.

If you apply to work with us we’ll only hold your data for the purposes of that application.