Implementation of the national animal identification and tracing scheme may be 17 months away, but farmers are being advised to start preparing.
Ian Corney, the former chairman of the national animal identification and tracing (Nait) scheme and now chairman of Nait's Stakeholders Reference Group, said farmers should consider starting to use approved tags for young cattle and deer which will still be on their farms after November 1 next year, when the scheme becomes mandatory.
He has tagged his spring-born calves with Nait-approved tags, which he said cost him $1.85 an animal more than the traditional button-tags.
An implementation board chaired by farmer and company director Ted Coates has been appointed to carry out the programme for all cattle and deer by November 1, 2011, including addressing some teething issues.
While not wanting to reveal too much detail about those outstanding issues, he said one was about the rules on tagged animals which travelled between properties owned by the same farmer.
Mr Corney said a 10km radius from a biosecurity incursion was accepted as being manageable, but in his case, his second property was 15km away by road but 4km away in a direct line.
The issue was whether information on the movement of animals between properties owned by the same farmer but further than 10km apart needed to be recorded.
He said the traceability system had to be simple to get buy-in from farmers.
With that in mind, information on livestock movement will be able to be sent to a central database over the internet, by fax or by an 0900 telephone number, for which there will be a small charge.
Mr Corney said the options recognised not every farmer had access to broadband internet service.
The three main tag suppliers all had tags that met Nait requirements.
While farmers did not have to buy electronic tag readers, if they did, there was plenty of variety from which to choose, from basic to high-tech, Mr Corney said.
In short, if farmers moved cattle and deer off their farms, that movement, along with the individual animals involved, had to be recorded on the Nait database.
If animals were sold privately between farmers, the onus was on the seller to notify the database, but the new owner also had to notify the arrival of those animals.
If animals are sold to a meat company, then the meat company will notify the database.
If they are sold through a saleyard, then the selling company will handle the notification.
However, Mr Corney suggested, initially, sellers double check to ensure the information had been forwarded as required.
"At the end of the day, the onus is on the owner to ensure that it does happen," he said.
Mr Corney said there could be business opportunities for transport operators and stock agents to handle movement information on behalf of lifestyle block and small-scale farmers who may not have the knowledge or equipment.
He reiterated earlier comments he has made about the inclusion of sheep in a traceability scheme, saying he believed eventually sheep would be included, by either flock or individual identification.
But it made sense not to include sheep initially.
"If we turned around and from November 1 next year we said all animals in New Zealand will be covered by Nait, the only thing we would achieve would be a monumental [mistake]."