In the latest Annual Report from the Office for the Internal Market (OIM) we were encouraged to read about the work that has been happening to address issues in the UK’s livestock traceability system, which we raised with Defra Secretary of State Emma Reynolds recently.

We have been urging the UK Government and devolved administrations to ensure that any modernisation of traceability systems maintains full compatibility across Great Britain.

At a minimum, we argue that this will require common data standards, seamless data sharing and a coordinated approach to recording livestock movements, so the industry can continue operating within a single, reliable traceability framework.

In addressing the specific issue of Electronic Identification tags for cows, the OIM made a couple of recommendations following a Short Form Review, one of which was that devolved governments “set up a cross-border trade working group involving representatives from the farming, livestock auction and abattoir/meat processing sectors to discuss how cross-border trade can be maintained and what investments would best support it.”

In their Annual Report the OIM lays out the issues surrounding adopting two different Electronic Identification tagging systems across the UK and describes the likely impacts and issues including extra costs and trade frictions.

To maintain momentum we’re now keen to get involved with setting up the cross-border trade working group. We’ll keep you posted on how this progresses.