[Small Farmer]

12^th June 2012

MEDIA RELEASE: FOR IMMEDIATE USE

On Monday the 11th June the National Sheep Association’s English Committee met all the companies and consortiums involved in the tendering process for a sheep movements database in England with the aim of making sure all the submissions understood the key needs of the sheep sector.

Phil Stocker of the NSA said " We invited all 4 companies to The Sheep Centre to individually talk about their approach to their tender and to question NSA English Committee about how their plans might work in practice and how they viewed the needs of sheep farmers. NSAs key advice is to keep the movements database simple and focus on recording movements efficiently with the aim of providing the industry with the disease spread protection it needs. This is crucial to gain confidence in new and existing markets, for the UK to keep trading or return to trading quickly in the event of an outbreak, and to reduce public expenditure in the event of any compulsory cull or vaccination programme. The additional (non statutory) features of a movements database must come secondary with full confidence that such information can only be shared with the consent of the farmer whose information it is.

The date for tenders to be submitted to Defra is the 25th June and NSA is committed to ensuring that the eventual service provider is as in touch with the industry as possible".

Ends

National Sheep Association[/font]
The Sheep Centre, Malvern, Worcs. WR13 6PH[/font]
Tel: 01684892661 Fax: 01684892663[/font]

[Fowgill Farm]

   they don't make the same cake & arse of it as the pigs!  
Mandy 

[SallyintNorth]

  they don't make the same cake & arse of it as the pigs!  
Mandy 

It will be a gazillion times worse than pigs. 

Anyone out there involved with tendering want a retired IT project manager (a "damn good kick a$$e project manager" to quote one of my referees ) who now knows quite a bit about sheep farming on their team... give me a call.  I'd do it just to help it be less of an overbearing mess of a useless waste of space and time, and deliver some actual benefits to farmers.

[Hazelwood Flock]

With the cost of posting movement forms spiralling I would welcome online movement reporting to come out of this.....any type of sheep database will end up a dog's breakfast, that's the only certainty! 
 

[woollyval]

Oh for the olden days pre 2001.....

[Foobar]

Computer systems are all well and good, but when they crash you are shafted.  Like what happened to the Pig eAML last week.  No paper backup method either.  Doh.


And what are the old hill farmers with no computers gonna do?  Gawd, I could rant for hours on this subject , and I do IT for a living!!  Some people need to get it into their heads that there is a limit to what computers can do for you.


Maybe one day every animal will have a gps tracker chip in it, so AH will always know where they are without us needing to fill in forms.     Ooo, perhaps I should patent that quickly...

[TheCaptain]

Computer systems are all well and good, but when they crash you are shafted.  Like what happened to the Pig eAML last week.  No paper backup method either.  Doh.


And what are the old hill farmers with no computers gonna do?  Gawd, I could rant for hours on this subject , and I do IT for a living!!  Some people need to get it into their heads that there is a limit to what computers can do for you.


Maybe one day every animal will have a gps tracker chip in it, so AH will always know where they are without us needing to fill in forms.     Ooo, perhaps I should patent that quickly...

Certainly help me know where my lambs are...

[SteveHants]

I like the idea of performance recording and individual numbering, now if only DEFRA would buy me a tag reader and some software....


oh, and  maybe a laptop too.




 


(yeah, right)

[TheCaptain]

And renew the licenses every year...