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Stock traceability a struggle
Fiona Myers

July 15, 2009
THE Australian sheep industry's latest attempt to improve traceability of stock is making slow progress.

July 1 was touted as a date from which the new mob-based recording system could be used by saleyards.

It is designed to speed up the process of tracing stock back to their property if there was a disease outbreak, with records being able to be searched electronically rather than plough through a stack of paperwork.

And while many yards are in the process of setting up the computer systems to cope with it, few have it in place.

The system, where information from national vendor declarations is put on a national database, has been trialled at Warracknabeal, and Dubbo and Corowa in NSW, over the past few months.

The information can be lodged in a number of ways, but many saleyards are choosing to simply scan National Vendor Declarations and lodge these in the mega database.

While there were some teething problems, National Livestock Identification Service Ltd manager Jo Quigley said it was now "ready to go".

"The functionality of the system has been in place for some time and there are a number of yards doing it (lodging information) at the moment," Ms Quigley said.

"We are not sure if they are just trialling the information or are in full swing but the national database is up and running."

While few Victorian yards started using the mob-based movement system at the start of this month, Livestock Saleyards Association of Victoria executive officer David Pollock said they were working towards adopting it.

"Most, if not all, of the Victorian saleyards applied for funding to implement the system and are in the process of installing the (computer) software and hardware to meet the requirements," he said.

The Bendigo Livestock Exchange, the biggest sheep-selling centre in Victoria, is still to bring itself online but a spokesman said they were in the process of buying the computer software to get it up and running.

Victorian Department of Primary Industries animal standards branch manager Dr Tony Britt said while the implementation of mob-based movement recording in saleyards was important, it was "not the No. 1 issue" for the industry.

"The issue that the industry still needs to deal with is transaction identification, so that it is possible for anyone to grab a sheep and know reliably its last property of residence," he said.

In NSW, the implementation has been put back until September, as regulations have to be passed by Parliament for it to go ahead.

NSW sheepmeat industry leader Bill O'Halloran said he believed NSW saleyards were in the process of "gearing up" for a new target date of September 1.