Numbering system to help farmers cope with tougher animal ID rules

Listed breeding company Livestock Improvement (LIC) has launched a new business division it hopes will help farmers to cope with increasingly tough international animal identification rules.

In order to meet the needs of safety-conscious consumers in Europe and Asia an industry working group has recommended that a mandatory animal ID system be put in place by October 2007.

The issue of animal identification was highlighted this month when Korean authorities discovered unacceptable traces of pesticide in New Zealand beef.

The pesticide was traced to one Northland farmer and all the cases of contaminated meat were identified.

Plans for tougher identification rules mean every animal on every farm will be given a unique number which it will carry all the way to market. Cattle identification schemes are mandatory for all major trading partners except the US.

Traceability, LIC's new business unit, will aim to transfer the firm's existing identification technology from dairy cows to other livestock.

More than 90 per cent of dairy farmers already use LIC's Herd Minder recording system, said Traceability manager Craig Purcell.

Farmers using the system can record an animal's details out in the paddock using a handheld computer.

Purcell said LIC had spent the past 12 months investigating the possibility of spinning the service off as a separate division.

It was decided that the beef sector was the most obvious new market to target.

"If you go and look at our product, at the moment it [is] clearly built for the dairy industry," Purcell said.

"We have to make them feel and smell like beef tools."

The division would also be looking to target the lifestylers market.

"That is one of the biggest challenges for our biosecurity people."

Lifestyle farmers often had just 10 to 20 animals and there was no particular system in place for those people to get registered on a national database, Purcell said.

But the new industry guidelines are likely to require that every animal in the country is fully traceable.

Purcell said Traceability was developing value-added tools for farmers, who were looking at the new traceability requirements as a compliance cost.

LIC's dairy system was 100 per cent voluntary yet levels of participation were outstanding, he said.

Providing recording equipment was relatively simple but the big challenge would be to provide beef farmers with something which added value to their business.