NAIT won't wait

THE National Animal Identification and Tracing project (NAIT) was started in April 2006 and now, three years on, Taranaki farmers have had a chance to have their say as part of a series of public meetings about it.
A public meeting held at the home of Bryce and Leeann Hunger in Dudley Road, Inglewood, drew an eager audience of rural professionals, keen to learn more about the system and how its implementation will affect them.
The purpose of NAIT is to develop a national livestock identification system to replace the present systems of tracking and tracing. The present systems are adequate for New Zealand, but it is expected that in an ever-expanding international market, the increasing demand for information from meat processors and exporters will eventually render current systems obsolete, threatening the industry as a whole.
Under a new NAIT system, farmers will need to ensure that all cattle and deer are tagged with a NAIT approved tag within three months of their birth, that those tags are recorded on a database and that NAIT headquarters is notified when tagged animals are moved to other farms.
Saleyards, transporters and meat processors will need to acknowledge receipt of any tagged animals, as well as note any transportation, dispatch or slaughter dates.
Tagging will be done with radio frequency identification devices (RFID), embedded in the animals. These devices have a unique number embedded in them and can be read by a special microchip reader at whatever point along its journey an animal is.
According to designers of the system, there are a huge number of on-farm benefits, including accurate recording of production details about individual animals regular weight measurements, keeping record of treatments, breeding information and the measurement of milk production. Because of these things, designers also expect New Zealand meat to fetch a higher price on the market.
However, long-time opponents of the scheme, Federated Farmers continue to have reservations about the value of the system, given technology and database maintenance costs and the fact that the system will become compulsory.
"It is right that as a food trading nation we produce nutritious, wholesome and safe food that meets consumer expectations," said Don Nicolson, national president of Federated Farmers, "farmers will play their part, but it's not clear that having a brand new Wellington bureaucracy forcing farmers to have a numberplate on every sheep, cow or deer is going to be worth it."
"A voluntary animal identification scheme aimed at proving the concept, systems and economic value to farmers, is the only logical way forward," said Federated Farmers spokesperson, Lachlan Mackenzie, "It also requires the meat processors to put up or shut up on the value return they claim animal identification would bring farmers."
Taranaki Federated Farmers president, Peter Adamski, has his own reservations about the system.
"We're worried about how animal traceability information is going to be used," said Peter, "some even suggest it might be used as part of the emissions trading scheme."
The public meeting held in Inglewood was one in a series of meetings around the country during which consultants have been fielding questions about the system, as well as demonstrating how the RFIDs work.
Some still remain sceptical about the system and have been using the meetings to express their disapproval of NAIT.
"The big cost of running a new database is not justified. The Livestock Improvement database is already working, and we don't think it's fair that the cost of setting up and maintaining another database is passed onto farmers," said Peter.