Tracing system loses 90,000 cattle

3 December 1999



Tracing system ‘loses’ 90,000 cattle

By Farmers Weekly staff

THOUSANDS of cattle are missing from the governments computerised tracking system, designed to convince European consumers that British beef is safe.

Almost 90,000 cattle are missing from the records of the British Cattle Movement Service, which was set up by the government last year.

The BCMS was set up by the Ministry of Agriculture as a requirement of European rules allowing the resumption of British beef exports.

It is an integral part of the governments efforts to improve consumer confidence in beef at home and abroad and prove that BSE is no longer a problem.

Just as changes in ownership of cars are logged from the time a vehicle is first sold to the time it is scrapped, similar data relating to cattle are recorded by the government.

The BCMS tracks animals from birth to death. It began work after the government agreed to pay £35 million to set up the service and run the scheme for 12 months.

But 90,000 of the cattle are missing from BCMS records, admitted David Crellin, the organisations head of operations in Workington, Cumbria.

“Its missing information,” he said.

“We get notification that an animal has been sold, say, but then we dont get details about where it has gone. We have about 90,000 cases where half the story is missing.”

Forty BCMS staff are working full-time to track down the missing cattle. A further 60 staff are rectifying incorrectly completed paperwork for other cattle.

Farmers have moaned that filling in cattle “passports” and sending them off to the BCMS every time they buy or sell an animal is time-consuming and expensive.

Some producers have even been forced to re-send details to the BCMS because incorrectly printed passports have been returned from Workington in the post.

But Mr Crellin blamed the missing cattle on farmers who had not bothered to notify the BCMS when they had bought or sold animals.

The controversy surrounding the cost of running the scheme recently resulted in the government waiving the £7 charge for each passport from farmers until 2002.

In order to reduce costs further, an estimated 21% of livestock markets are now sending movement information to BCMS by e-mail.

But farmers applying for passports appear less willing to use technology,
with only about 3% of applications a week being sent by e-mail.