Feds welcome NAIT scheme recommendations

Federated Farmers says its members will jump at the chance to contribute to the drive for improvements to the National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme.

A report detailing a major review of NAIT, with 38 recommendations aimed at streamlining processes and boosting access and compliance, was released after a long process involving OSPRI, MPI and a host of industry groups, including Federated Farmers.

President Katie Milne says the Federation’s position is that anything that can be done to improve the system and make it more effective and easier for farmers to use will be valuable. Recommendations include: - Enabling direct access to NAIT core data by police and other crown agencies for stock theft and wandering stock enquiries;

- Development of mobile and web applications to improve accessibility for end users;

- Addition of other attributes in response to farmer and/or industry requests to support disease management, food safety, marketing assurance and animal production needs.

“We don’t believe that the recommendations should be treated as some sort of smorgasbord, to pick and choose from,” Katie says. “The comprehensive suite of recommendations has been closely debated and scrutinised by experts and industry body representatives and they deserve to be adopted as a whole.” Federated Farmers is looking forward to contributing to the consultation process in June.