The animal identification regime needs to be reassessed to safeguard the future of the industry and the economy, Meat and Wool New Zealand chairman Jeff Grant says.
He is chairing a working group of representatives from various agricultural organisations formed recently to review national animal identification and tracking systems.
It is evaluating
international developments in animal identification and traceability, including the potential for more use of electronic identification (EID) systems.
The country's biggest farmer, Landcorp, says it is extending trials using electronic tags to identify livestock on some properties.
Fonterra chief executive Andrew Ferrier says his group wants a more complete database of dairy herds and their movements to improve "traceability" in any disease outbreak. He says animals have to be fully traceable to ring-fence an outbreak such as mad-cow disease or foot-and-mouth.
- NZPA
