Volume 12: Livestock Farming
4. Cattle production and movement
Record-keeping and cattle-tracking
Identification and record-keeping requirements when BSE emerged
Influence of BSE
Problems with farmers' records

4.15 Systems to identify farm animals have been used in the UK for centuries. Historically, owners identified their animals for day-to-day farm management purposes such as breeding, feeding, and milk yield records. More recently, national policies on disease control have led to a succession of record-keeping and animal identification requirements for farmers to implement. The first fully national identification scheme in the UK was introduced for cattle in 1953, as part of efforts to eradicate bovine tuberculosis. All cattle that were not already registered with a breed society had to be identified with an ear tag or tattoo. The system has undergone some modifications, but still forms the basis for the identification and registration scheme that operates in the UK. ¹ Since 1992 national systems of identification and tracking have been required to help identify livestock for payments made to farmers under the various livestock schemes introduced as part of CAP reforms.

4.16 Cattle-tracking comprises:

1. the physical identification of an individual animal and the recording of its details;
2. recording the movements of individual animals; and
3. using the above:
   • to trace an animal's movements over time, identifying all locations at which it has been held, and all other animals held concurrently at those, or nearby, locations; and
   • to trace an animal's dam or progeny. ²

4.17 This section describes farmers' obligations with respect to (i.) and (ii.), and how they changed in response to the BSE outbreak. Further details about policy development on national tracking systems relevant to BSE can be found in vol. 5: Animal Health, 1989-96. The Department of Agriculture for Northern Ireland had operated a comprehensive, computerised cattle-tracking system for some years, and this is discussed in vol. 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

Identification and record-keeping requirements when BSE emerged

4.18 The statutory requirements imposed on owners or keepers of cattle to provide identification and movement records have gradually grown and, with computerisation, have become more sophisticated. The legislation governing record-keeping at 1986 is described briefly in vol. 14: Responsibilities for Human and Animal Health.

4.19 In brief, there were three relevant sets of legislation. The Movement of Animals (Records) Order 1960 (made under the Diseases of Animals Act 1950) required farmers to keep records of the movements of animals onto or off their premises; the movement records had to be kept for three years. The Animal Health Act 1981 provided the Minister with powers to prescribe and regulate the marking of animals for disease control purposes. The Tuberculosis (England and Wales) Order 1984 (made under the provisions of the Animal Health Act 1981) set down particular requirements for the ear tagging of bovine animals.

4.20 The 'movement books' kept by farmers under the requirements of the 1960 Order were inspected and signed by local authority Trading Standards Officers. However, it was difficult for the authorities to check the accuracy of records, and in practice they could only check that records actually existed on farm. Errors and omissions would only surface when specific animal tracing was attempted. ³ Some farmers kept books that recorded more details than required by the law, usually for production and breeding purposes. ⁴

4.21 In principle, record-keeping should have made it possible for interested parties to follow an animal's movements during its lifetime and identify the farm of origin. This was particularly important for disease control, since it was easier to prevent or control an epidemic if the course of the disease could be identified:

Animal diseases may be spread in a variety of ways and this can dictate the information requirement. Where spread involves aerial transmission or contact with other animals (eg foot and mouth disease) interest mainly concerns the movement of animals. BSE and the possibility of maternal transmission has added another dimension in that there could be a need to trace the animal's dam and/or its progeny, involving breeding as well as movement records. The present basic information requirements for disease control involve knowledge of when and where an animal was born, when and where it has been moved to and the identity of animals it may have been in contact with including details of its dam and any progeny.

The nature of the disease itself also determines the speed with which tracing has to be carried out. ⁵

Influence of BSE

4.22 With the emergence of BSE there were concerns about the adequacy of existing cattle-tracking regimes. In particular the long incubation period of BSE and its unpredictable nature called into question the effectiveness of the requirement under the 1960 Order to keep movement records for only three years. This led to a further series of controls under the Bovine Animals (Identification, Marking and Breeding Records) Order 1990 (SI 1867), ⁶ the Movement of Animals (Records) Amendment Order 1990, and the Tuberculosis (England and Wales) Amendment Order 1990.

4.23 Articles 4 and 9 of the Bovine Animals (Identification, Marking and Breeding Records) Order required all cattle farmers to keep a record of calves born into the herd and the identity of their dams. Article 4 required that dairy cattle be marked and recorded within 36 hours of birth and all other cattle within seven days of birth. Under article 9, farmers had to keep records for ten years (instead of three) and the records had to be made available to an inspector on demand. The Movement of Animals (Records) Amendment Order required that movement records also be retained for ten years. ⁷

4.24 To help ensure that record-keeping was as efficient as possible, in response to the new controls, the National Farmers' Union (NFU) offered its members on-farm breeding and movement record sheets. ⁸

4.25 In 1992, Council Directive 92/102/EEC on the Identification and Registration of Animals ('the Directive') ⁹ was agreed as part of general CAP reforms, and to help identify animals eligible for various livestock assistance schemes. Among other things, the Directive required movements of cattle to be recorded giving origin and destination of the cattle concerned (article 4). All cattle had to be identified with an ear tag with a code of no more than 14 characters (article 5).

4.26 On 30 January 1995 the Bovine Animals (Records, Identification and Movement) Order 1995 (SI 12) ¹⁰ came into force to implement the Directive. Cattle farmers were required to register with their local Animal Health Office (article 4) and to keep breeding and movement records (article 5). These were similar to the existing legislative requirements, but farmers were now required to send a movement document with cattle going to market (article 6). Furthermore, the Order introduced the Ear Tag Allocation System (ETAS), which gave all cattle a unique identity (article 8). ¹¹

4.27 It was relatively easy to implement these requirements in the UK, as many were similar to aspects of domestic legislation already in force, which was in parts more stringent than the Directive. This was especially so in Northern Ireland, which already had a comprehensive cattle identification and movement tracing systemin place (see vol. 9: Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland).

Problems with farmers' records

4.28 Even with the UK's long history of record-keeping for statutory purposes, there were deficiencies in the records kept by farmers, and therefore in their usefulness for disease control programmes. Perennial problems included the amount of paperwork involved in keeping the records and the practical problems and costs of ear tagging.

4.29 On 20 December 1993 Mr Martin Haddon, Under Secretary in the Animal Health and Veterinary Group at MAFF, wrote to Mr D MacInnes of the Association of County Councils to express his Ministry's concern about the quality of statutory record-keeping on farms:

You will no doubt be aware that over the last year or so, MAFF Veterinary Officers have had to carry out extensive tracing of livestock movements for disease control purposes . . . These tracing exercises were unfortunately serverely hampered by inaccurate livestock movement records and deliberate, unrecorded removal of ear tags from imported cattle. To give an indication of the size of the problem, during a recent exercise in one particular county 43% of breeding records and 26% of animal movement records were found to be incomplete or non-existent. This was from a small survey but does demonstrate that a very real problem exists with the recording of animal breeding and movement records. ¹²

4.30 The House of Commons Agriculture Committee noted in 1995 that 'in the course of three inquiries we have been told that farmers' records constitute the main flaw in the animal tracking system.' ¹³ This was because farmers do not always maintain the records they are legally required to keep as accurately or completely as they should. ¹⁴

4.31 Further developments on cattle-tracking are discussed in vol. 5: Animal Health, 1989-96.