The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Livestock => Pigs => Topic started by: Anke on November 11, 2011, 03:43:21 pm
-
Having just read through my new guidance document (twice) I am a bit stumped as to the ID requirements.
What do (non breeding) pigs that have moved onto my holding with a temporary mark while under 12 months old have to have as ID while they are fattened on my holding? They will of course get their slaughter tags (my herd number) prior to moving off to the abattoir, but that number is not the holding of birth. Would it not have been much clearer if all pigs moving away from their holding of birth have to be eartagged on leaving there as do sheep/goats? Do I still need to complete the form for Trading standards or is this new system replacing that?
It also seems to be very convoluted that both the sender and the receiver have to separately inform the powers that are... what a waste of everybody's time.... maybe I am missing the point, but what's the reason for that?
Has anyone signed up to the ScotEID database yet - any impressions?
-
I got two copies of the guidance this morning. Haven't read either yet.
The whole traceablility thing makes me laugh when the abattoir / butcher managed to "lose" HappyHippy's pig ::)
-
anke yes i agree but anybody that buys from me there pigs are marked with my herd number (what it should be )
rosemary lose is just a general term they sold it or gave it away to somebody :farmer:
-
I got my copy through today too :thumbsup:
Can't make head nor tails of it - though this was probably down to the 2 year old screaming in my ear, the one year old pulling my hair and the quantity of painkillers I'm on ::) I'll not be barn dancing again anytime soon :D
As far as I know (but only from reading the draught legislation, so it's probably changed since then ::)) moving from farm to farm under a year (as in the case of buying weaners) can still be done on a paint mark, the only real change in regard to the paintmark is (I think !) with markets - they can't have pigs for sale which aren't ID'd (got to have breeders/sellers herd mark on them somewhere) but the ID for slaughter stays the same - metal tag/slapmark.
Rosemary - I agree ! What's the point in all this 'legislation' when a carcass manages to go astray ? :-\
I've said it before, & I'll say it again..... no matter how much legislation you've got, you can't legislate against idiots :o (I don't mean that in a derogatory sense against anyone on here - I mean numpties at slaughterhouses who can't read >:()
Karen :wave:
-
Anke,
When I looked up the legislation, Scotland now has the same rules as England & Wales.
In E&W (and now in scotland) any pig under one year old (except on a move to slaughter) can move on a temporary mark, and once moved does not need any further ID whilst it remains on the destination farm. the rules "start again" when it is next moved ie if still under one year old, another temp mark, if over a year old tag or tattoo of sending farms herdmark, or tag/slap if to slaughter.
As I am not in Scotland, I have not had a pack, but looking on-line is it the "Pig Identification and Registration – Guidance for Keepers in Scotland" book you are looking at - and if so on what page is your confusion.
A brief look at the ScotEID (again I can't register unless I move!), and it seems to be much less confusing than E&W, and they are sensibly not collecting Animal transport certificate (ATC) info. This will mean that you may/will have to still create a paper doc with this info on, but they give you a proforma
http://www.scoteid.com/Public/Documents/pigs/possible_move_doc.pdf (http://www.scoteid.com/Public/Documents/pigs/possible_move_doc.pdf)
Which would capture what scotaldn thinks an ATC will need.
Be grateful you don't live in E&W where a more complec system is in place !
-
I the only real change in regard to the paintmark is (I think !) with markets - they can't have pigs for sale which aren't ID'd (got to have breeders/sellers herd mark on them somewhere) but the ID for slaughter stays the same - metal tag/slapmark.
That would be consistent with E&W
-
oaklands that is the publication that is the one that states sheep goats and cattle are subject to a 13 day standstill when you move pigs on (page 11 first para ) :farmer:
-
I've only lipped through it so far (arrived today, too), but one thing I did notice is that it appears we in Scotland can now apply for a walking permit for pigs.
I'm tempted to apply for one, just for the badness. I wonder whether they'd grant one, given that the local crofters sheep wander the streets freely here.
-
oaklands that is the publication that is the one that states sheep goats and cattle are subject to a 13 day standstill when you move pigs on (page 11 first para ) :farmer:
Thanks Robert for confirmation, and will read properly when I get a minute, however it does seem that both north and south of the border now have identical ID.
It is of course always good to see uniformity in disease control, I can only presume 13 days in Scotland rather than the 6 in England & Wales for non-pigs is because germs take longer to er... germinate in colder temperatures - it can't possibly be because someone is just making this stuff up can it ???
-
perish the though that some tit is just making it up :D :farmer:
-
perish the though that some tit is just making it up :D :farmer:
I wonder whether William Hill's are offering odds on this? ;)
-
Oh well, I had thought that it may actually make some sense to have the same ID requirements for sheep/goats and pigs, as in eartags/tattoo from holding of birth, so that there is a chance of traceablity - this way they are going to be slaughtered with my herd number, but were bred in a different holding... but hey that would just be too sensible...
So for the time being my girls will have no tattoos or body piercings - bet they would love some though...
-
Oh well, I had thought that it may actually make some sense to have the same ID requirements for sheep/goats and pigs, as in eartags/tattoo from holding of birth, so that there is a chance of traceablity - this way they are going to be slaughtered with my herd number, but were bred in a different holding... but hey that would just be too sensible...
So for the time being my girls will have no tattoos or body piercings - bet they would love some though...
BH still can't get over his incredulity at being able to move weaners with nothing more than a temporary paint mark.
I can see that, given the way pigs play with each other (and sometimes fight), it is not necessarily a good idea to apply eartags to young pigs; better to do it at the last moment.
Ear tattoos could be mandated though, couldn't they? Though perhaps they're not visible on black ears?
-
The problems with putting eratags on piglets are :
a) You need to allow space for the ear to grow. If the pig is going to be a breeding sow, the ear will be considerably bigger, so if you don't allow growth room (large air gap at the edge) the tag gorws inton the ear, and can acuse distress and infection. We have had to cut out tags from pigswhich we have bought for breeding as they were too close (allowed for medical reasons) and removing a tag takes a good deal of skill and patience (both yours and the pigs). As Sally says there is also a much greater risk of earb damage due to play etc.
b) If you bought a fattener with a tag at say 8 weeks old, you must also tag or slap it when you take it to the abattoir - pigs must have ID of the holding it is travelling from. Therefore the pig would end up with two ID's, which at best means the abattoir has to do two reads to check which pig it is, and at worst adds confusion, as the abattoir only reads one (presuming both to be the same), and then can't find the paperwork.
Ear tattoos are the hardest thing to read on a clean pig, let alone one that has been outside for a while - and again we are after a proportional response here.
I would argue that any ID on a pig (or sheep for that matter) is pointless, as all the authorities need to know is that an animal has moved onto holding b from holding a. If disease breaks out and holding a has it, all holding b's animals are killed anyway, no matter where they came from. Trouble is that authorities think we all flout the rules and without ID would move animals without telling anyone, so they went down the route where we start id'ing things, and then when sheep lose tags, we get to individual ID, then EID with cross referencing - anyone would think we were handling nuclear watse. So we now know every cow in GB, but have no idea how many people live here ! Hey ho Sunday rant over !
-
a few points on your last deliberation oaklands tattoos can and are seen on the right color of ear maybee you should go on one of bill Howe's courses for tattooing
the pig with two ids you buy a calve you don't change the tag you don't re-tag and if it goes to slaughter it is id as where it came from where it was born etc what is wrong why have pigs to be different
the sheep id is a load of b*****ks have you not seen the vast quantity's of sheep that are stolen never to reapear so eid does not work
as to handling nuclear waste if the commodity is worth money some one will devise a way to skim a bit off for themselves :farmer:
-
further confusion and mayhem
we have been sent (before we received the pig id and registration guidance) the act of the Scottish parliament (2011 no327) it says a document accompanying a pig must contain details of the holding of birth
BUT THE LIVESTOCK TRACEBILITY FORMS SENT OUT WITH THE GUIDANCE DOES NOT HAVE THIS FACILITY :farmer:
-
I can see that, given the way pigs play with each other (and sometimes fight), it is not necessarily a good idea to apply eartags to young pigs; better to do it at the last moment.
[/quote]
Young goats are well nown to get ripped ears from sticking their heads through fences etc etc, so eartags in goats are just as unfeasible (from an animal welfare point of view) as they are in young pigs. same for lambs/sheep, although mine seem not to have a problem with the newer tags (famous last words). Really a tatto/brandmark (as horses used to have, not sure if they still do) would be most durable and more difficult to alter/fake/change...
But hey ho... who says it should make sense????
-
further confusion and mayhem
we have been sent (before we received the pig id and registration guidance) the act of the Scottish parliament (2011 no327) it says a document accompanying a pig must contain details of the holding of birth
BUT THE LIVESTOCK TRACEBILITY FORMS SENT OUT WITH THE GUIDANCE DOES NOT HAVE THIS FACILITY :farmer:
The need to enter holding of birth for pigs temporarily marked must qualify for the most pointless piece of pig legislation - and there are some stong contenders!
Given that :
all moves are notified (or if not somone is not going to cheat on the first move and then tell the truth on the second!) therefore the authorities already know the chain of moves between farms.
That standstills slow/stop the spread of disease, so if legally moved the disease firewall has already happened
that a temporary mark only needs to last for the journey
and that all pigs on a farm with disease are killed if suspect
Under what circumstances would knowing from a form the holding of birth of some pigs be needed, when the authorities are looking at a pen of pigs where some have come from farm a and some from farm b, but we don't know which as they have lost their temporary marks (hence the word temporary!), and we already have the paperwork that shows that some came from farm a and some from farm b in any case?
-
Much as I hate to validate anything the animal id people come up with, I can actually see the point of wanting holding of birth.
I think it is naive to assume that all possible diseases have been identified because everyone has complied with their standstill requirements. Even if all farmers are totally vigilant, some diseases will not evidence until later. Plus, there will be new diseases, for which the epidemiology will be different.
Therefore, if pigs arrive on a holding which then develops a notifiable disease, not only is it useful to know where those pigs came from but also where they originated.
The authorities have that info for cattle, as every single move of every single beast is recorded and held centrally. Increasingly the same is true of sheep (although at present there is no central database so the information would take weeks to collate the first time it's needed. ::)) And even without sheep EID, the movement forms have for some time required the logging of the flock number in the ears of all the sheep - ie, the holding(s) of birth of all sheep in the consignment.
-
Sally,
My point is that the authorities already have the chain of moves through the previous forms, so entering the holding of birth on a form makes no sense for an animal that you cannot ID two minutes after it gets there!
-
My point is that the authorities already have the chain of moves through the previous forms, so entering the holding of birth on a form makes no sense for an animal that you cannot ID two minutes after it gets there!
Having data and being able to derive information are very different things.
It would be impractical for them to piece together contacts by going back over old movement forms in any but extremely isolated cases. In a disease outbreak they would need a much quicker method.
Even once the information is collected electronically, as eAML comes in, it will be much easier to trace contacts if each move supplies the holding of birth. (I used to be involved in writing queries for large computer databases, I do know what I am talking about.) In fact, unless the holding of birth of the animals in the shipment is included on the movement form, it would not be possible to know the specific holding(s) of birth of the specific pigs in the consignment, it would only be possible to know all of the holdings which supplied pigs to the consigning holding - and if they had moved once already since birth, that may not include any or all of the holdings of birth.
I understand your point about the individual animal's ID getting lost on arrival. But there is still the ability to trace contacts between farms. If a disease were found in an animal know to have arrived from holding B, then all holdings with a connection to holding B would be the first to investigate for further incidence. If the holdings of birth of the animals that were in the batch in which the disease occurred are also known, then each of these can also be immediately assessed - which could mean saving days or weeks in curtailing the spread of the disease.
-
Sally,
Suspect we'll never agree on this one :)
If you are right, then the whole point of the last 10 years and esp. of e-aml is lost.
It is precisely because forms were keyed onto AMLS and in future will be keyed into e-aml that you are able to back track. These systems only exist to allow this function to take place, there is no other reason for them. Whilst I share a little of your cynicism on IT (I also wrote and managed systems), the current AMLS has backtracking written into it, as does E-aml.
It is perfectly possible to find a disease on farm D, and get the system to say what moves onto farm D have happened in the last say month. This would produce say farms C & B, each of which would have to be visited to check if they have disease. If farm C does, then its anticedents are checked and so on. If Farm B doesn't then its anticedents aren't checked. You would not randomly visit anticedents just because they were a holding of birth, you would follow the disease chain. It is a pretty quick process, esp as you put complete standstills in place as soon as disease spreads, and have 6 & 20 day stabndstills in place when there is no disease.
-
steady tigers the old system was slow at tracing the movements which was a lot better than we had before foot and mouth but there are or was flaws in the old paper system the new system e Aml is being introduced to speed up detection and to know where ever pig is (aye right there will still be illegal moves) the part about holding of birth i think is to try and get a better picture of the total pigs and also to catch out the ones that are doing the illegal moves BUT there is no provision on the new forms that show the box for the holding of birth is one department doing the law or statute part and an other doing the rest with no communication
would they not be better getting the same system as the national lottery have in less than an hour
of the draw taking place they can id the ticket the shop that sold it etc
also the disparity of the legislation betwean Scotland and England IE 6 day and 13 day standstill not that it bothers me with an approved isolation facility
there are regional talks on e Aml in England but none in Scotland unless you have heard of one :farmer:
also the haulier that is to check if they have the licence start time and offload time that is to check you are within the law and operating within your distance and obeying the speed limits ;D :farmer: ;D