- Location
- East Sussex
What imaginative minds some people have.
EID was put in place post FMD 2001 as a traceability system for sheep. Plenty would say it has never worked for the average commercial farmer who sold everything dead weight, but that is a discussion on its own.
Some farmers use it as a management tool, but it is not compulsory.
Cattle EID is still not compulsory, but some are using it as a management tool to speed up recording of individual actions/medicines, which is a statutory requirement anyway. The single greatest issue with cattle EID is that the present numbering system is separate to the number on the chip in the tag, so you have to use a separate piece of software to translate to the wysiwyg tag.
It is true that LIS appears to be becoming a very expensive white elephant, but all this talk of farmers being charged to use it are just that. It is a statutory requirement to record movements of all classes of livestock. The government contracts for ARAMS and BCMS were both due for renewal. ARAMS was in the end a functional system but lacked any live traceability so in fact in the event of another major disease outbreak was useless, it also required large quantities of paper to make it work.
BCMS has in the end, after many years become a reasonably effective system, however it is very expensive to run and the software, which belongs to IBM costs a fortune to maintain. There were some major issues with it over the accuracy of the information held, especially relating to deaths. However those of us who use other software systems for our records can do a reconciliation to ensure the data held by BCMS is 100% correct.
LIS is very late being introduced and I am told has now cost far more than originally envisaged. One of the main reasons it won't work is that it was originally designed to be a paperless system. I am told that it will still need paper movement licences, which while comforting to have, is in todays digital age an unnecessary complication and cost. It also slows down the traceability system.
When I was involved with the forerunner of LIS, there were a few simple things that should have been done to give farmers confidence in the system and transfer a benefit to them.
Firstly, once it was up and running the need for the 6 day standstill on all livestock on a farm apart from those that were brought in would no longer be required. (Accurate recording better than the present system!) Secondly having a paperless system that worked in real time should be far more accurate and give an opportunity for farmers to see accurate records of livestock killed.
Farmers should have access to their own records and a training system put in place to show how to access everything. The data should still belong to each individual farmer.
A simple one view portal for all livestock movements that can be input and read from a mobile phone was all that was required! Yes there are a small number of farmers who don't have access to this technology but there are ways around it for the very small number of these peole today.
Just to put the record straight, this whole project of LIS has been government led (DEFRA), yes AHDB has had a significant input, NFU has had no more influence than the LAA (Livestock Auctioneers Association) and others from the abattoir sector.
EID was put in place post FMD 2001 as a traceability system for sheep. Plenty would say it has never worked for the average commercial farmer who sold everything dead weight, but that is a discussion on its own.
Some farmers use it as a management tool, but it is not compulsory.
Cattle EID is still not compulsory, but some are using it as a management tool to speed up recording of individual actions/medicines, which is a statutory requirement anyway. The single greatest issue with cattle EID is that the present numbering system is separate to the number on the chip in the tag, so you have to use a separate piece of software to translate to the wysiwyg tag.
It is true that LIS appears to be becoming a very expensive white elephant, but all this talk of farmers being charged to use it are just that. It is a statutory requirement to record movements of all classes of livestock. The government contracts for ARAMS and BCMS were both due for renewal. ARAMS was in the end a functional system but lacked any live traceability so in fact in the event of another major disease outbreak was useless, it also required large quantities of paper to make it work.
BCMS has in the end, after many years become a reasonably effective system, however it is very expensive to run and the software, which belongs to IBM costs a fortune to maintain. There were some major issues with it over the accuracy of the information held, especially relating to deaths. However those of us who use other software systems for our records can do a reconciliation to ensure the data held by BCMS is 100% correct.
LIS is very late being introduced and I am told has now cost far more than originally envisaged. One of the main reasons it won't work is that it was originally designed to be a paperless system. I am told that it will still need paper movement licences, which while comforting to have, is in todays digital age an unnecessary complication and cost. It also slows down the traceability system.
When I was involved with the forerunner of LIS, there were a few simple things that should have been done to give farmers confidence in the system and transfer a benefit to them.
Firstly, once it was up and running the need for the 6 day standstill on all livestock on a farm apart from those that were brought in would no longer be required. (Accurate recording better than the present system!) Secondly having a paperless system that worked in real time should be far more accurate and give an opportunity for farmers to see accurate records of livestock killed.
Farmers should have access to their own records and a training system put in place to show how to access everything. The data should still belong to each individual farmer.
A simple one view portal for all livestock movements that can be input and read from a mobile phone was all that was required! Yes there are a small number of farmers who don't have access to this technology but there are ways around it for the very small number of these peole today.
Just to put the record straight, this whole project of LIS has been government led (DEFRA), yes AHDB has had a significant input, NFU has had no more influence than the LAA (Livestock Auctioneers Association) and others from the abattoir sector.
