April 30, 2007

Australia to test its traceability programme

Australia's National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) will be put to test next week on its effectiveness through a simulation exercise involving 300 heads of cattle.

Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries, and Forestry Peter McGauran said the exercise, to be held on 1-3 May, would test the NLIS (cattle) database and system, assessing lifetime traceability of cattle against the National Livestock Traceability Performance Standards.

The agriculture minister said the exercise will include tags that will be randomly selected from all breeds to assess how the system works against the natural performance standards. To comply with these standards, McGauran said animal movements must be able to be traced back for the previous 30 days within 24 hours and back to property-of-birth within 48 hours.

The information gathered by the exercise will be used to further refine the already world-class NLIS, he said.

McGauran said that a recent review found the current database was a significant improvement on the old paper-based system. However, the system was constantly monitored to maintain its world-leading status.

McGauran noted the international reputation of NLIS has been the key model of other countries' livestock identification system. But NLIS has to be improved such as the failure of some producers in notifying the database of animal movements. He said this problem would be addressed by further education and compliance to improve the recording of property-to-property movements.

The review also raised concerns about the lack of third-party scrutiny of the system. Auditing, compliance and reporting on the performance by each jurisdiction will be regularly monitored and refined by the NLIS Monitoring Working Group.