The availability of sheep traceability data has improved significantly in the UK with the first iteration of the UK View service which has gone live this week.
This new service, delivered by Livestock Information Ltd has innovative reporting capabilities for the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), providing a single consolidated view of sheep, goat and deer movement data via a collaboration between the official English, Welsh and the Scottish livestock traceability services.
There have been long standing efforts to improve the quality and efficiency of the livestock movement data available to UK and devolved Governments. Having such knowledge will allow for more informed decision making in support of APHA’s statutory and non-statutory work to manage risks and to control disease outbreaks helping to support the resilience of the UK sheep industry.
Release one will deliver consolidated GB sheep, goat and deer data for England, Scotland and Wales. It’s important to note that there is no change to how the data is being captured. Movements for these species will continue to be reported and recorded in the usual way by the LIS, ScotEID and EIDCymru traceability services. The UK View will simply collate and display the data more efficiently and in a more user-friendly manner.
Users of LIS can therefore be assured that their movement data recorded on the platform is feeding into this new service in as close to real time as possible. Where keepers record and report their animal’s movement online using LIS, this will be available significantly quicker than by posting movement documents to the LIS Bureau team – so we would encourage as many keepers as possible to give reporting via LIS online a try.
Ian Hewett, Managing Director for Livestock Information, says: “Efficient and effective disease control relies upon centralised up to-date and accurate data store. We would therefore strongly encourage those keepers who have not yet signed up to use the Livestock Information Service to report their animal’s movements online, to consider doing so. The service is free to use, help is available, and that will support us in transforming the accuracy of the traceability data available to us.”
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