EU counts sheep
13 May 2003

The EU is working to set up IT systems to track every livestock 
animal in Europe  

All cattle, sheep and goats across Europe will be registered in 
a single system, under proposals being considered in Brussels, 
the EU has said.  

The European Commission completed a project to electronically tag, 
identify and register livestock in six member states at the beginning 
of May 2003 and is now submitting proposals for a continent wide system. 
It is hoped that a European database would help trace animals and 
would be of benefit especially during a disease outbreak such as foot 
and mouth.  

The six countries - France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain 
and Portugal - ran the Electronic Identification of Animals project 
from March 1998. In the UK farmers have urged the Government to act 
more quickly to introduce new cattle tracing technology before 
Brussels issues an EU wide policy.  

According to the Commission, a common electronic system would 
replace existing ways of registering and tracing livestock which 
are inadequate.  

"Conventional systems based on ear tags, tattooing and marking can 
be modified and are not always reliable, potentially rendering them 
ineffective. Manual data recording is both slow and error prone," a 
Commission statement said.  

During the pilot project 390,000 cattle, 500,000 sheep and 29,000 
goats were electronically tagged. The devices were regularly checked 
including when the animals were slaughtered, the Commission said.  

It said that following the pilot there was a "substantial improvement" 
in tracing and no technical impedimentoe to the introduction of the 
technology.  

The EU will now adopt further procedures for electronic identification 
and measures to link up databases.  


Source: Kable's Government Computing
Publication date: 13/05/2003 05:09:41 PM


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Cheers, Steve...

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