Cattle passport plans on hold

The transfer of the responsibility for issuing Scottish cattle passports and maintaining the movement database from the Cattle Tracing Service (CTS) in Cumbria to SCOTEID in Aberdeenshire is to be postponed due to the Covid pandemic.

Speaking yesterday, Mairi Gougeon, Scotland’s minister for rural affairs, said that it had been agreed with the industry working group to delay the swapover from this summer until the end of November due to the impact which Covid-19 had had on some third-party software providers, as well as the wider farming community.

“The end of November date will mean that the autumn calving period and the main cattle sales will both be finished and there will be the minimum number of births and movements being registered on the system,” said Gougeon.

NFU Scotland president Andrew Mccornick, who chairs the Scottish Bovine EID Stakeholder Group, said the delay had been no surprise. “Industry stakeholders are keen to see progress made toward fully traceable cattle EID in Scotland but the transition must be managed sensibly,” he said.

He added that by ensuring the system was robust and resilient, Scotland would continue to be at the forefront of cattle traceability.

As far as the changeover to the use of electronic ear tags and full EID recording of data for cattle, speaking yesterday, SCOTEID director Bob Yuill said that while the issue had not yet been finalised, the current proposal remained on track for such tags to be introduced for calves during the summer of 2021.