Farmers have been asked to provide special certificates for dairy cattle exported to China, because of irregularities in the identification of cows sent from Australia.
From this month, farmers and other exporters will need a special certificate if they seek duty and tax exemptions available at the Chinese border for importeddairy cattle that qualify as breeding stock.
"We were approached by a delegation from the Chinese Ministry of Agriculture, saying they had some concerns - they mentioned Australia," Livestock Improvement's general manager of innovation, Dieter Adam, said yesterday.
"The problem was the authenticity of the papers that were accompanying animals and how reliable was the information on them.
"From what I understand, it's mostly related to Australia. They said they had no problems with the credibility of papers for New Zealand cows."
Australian exporters were limited by not having access to reliable information from a cattle genetics recording system equivalent to that in New Zealand.
The Livestock Improvement database is the largest bank of dairy herd genetic and management data in the world, with data on 14.2 million cows and sires. Every dairy cow in New Zealand has a unique ID on its ear tag and 98 per cent are on the national database.
Adam said the Chinese officials asked for a special certificate and Livestock Improvement produced three-generation pedigrees, with technical terms translated into Chinese. The certificates carried additional barcodes and serial numbers to avoid scams based on photocopying one certificate for use with multiple cows.
In addition to a three-generation pedigree, the certificates detail each animal's production in litres over 305 days and a figure indicating its breeding worth.
About 20,000 New Zealand dairy breeding cattle are expected to be shipped to China this year.
The Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry has estimated the dairy cattle shipments to China may grow to 60,000 cows and heifers a year.
