Changes to bovine identification, registration and movement in England

Cattle traceability helps to protect the national herd from disease and safeguard our food chain.

The proposals aim to improve cattle traceability by making it easier to navigate and less time consuming for farmers, ease administrative burden by reducing duplication and taking advantage of digitisation.

This will help farmers and the cattle industry to provide traceability data so we can collectively trace disease more quickly and effectively, improve public health and food safety through better data quality and improved traceability, and support industry by strengthening the UK position in international markets.

Proposals in the consultation include:

• simplifying the regulations
• more proportionate enforcement
• bovine electronic identification
• the future of holding registers
• the future of passports for cattle fitted with bovine electronic identification
• movements and reporting (including whole movement reporting)
• options to report moves in advance and provide transportation details, paperless processing and late registration of calves