Herdowner Obligations
Details of a herdowner's obligations under the cattle identification, notification and record keeping legislation.
Introduction
The EU requirements provide that all cattle keepers must notify the Department of the births, deaths and movement of cattle, animals must be double tagged and a herd register must be kept to record this information. Council Regulation (EC) No. 1760/2000 sets out the details of these requirements.
The following legislation enforces Council Regulation (EC) No. 1760/2000: -
•Cattle Identification (Enforcement) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998.
•Cattle Identification (No.2) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1998.
•Cattle Identification (Notifications of Births, Deaths & Movements) Regulations (Northern Ireland) 1999.
General Principles
- All calves born on or after 01 January 2000 must be identified with all-numeric double tags in the format shown in the diagram on the next page.
- It is important that MC1s are received within the required time i.e. within 27 days of birth to avoid identification and registration statuses being applied.
- When submitted IRM information results in a query or in application of a status, a herdkeeper may respond with further or amended information at a later date. There is NO DEADLINE within which this reply or further information must be provided, although any such information will need to be supported by other records e.g. contemporaneous herd records – see relevant section of IRM Staff Instructions for further details.
- All MC1s must be date stamped (on the front) on receipt. This will normally be the Birth Notification Date.
- Once actioned, all MC1s must be initialled and dated before filing.
- On APHIS herds are associated for disease control reasons only. Such herd associations do not have a bearing on LNR procedures. See Table 1, Page 19, Row 2.
- Calves should not be registered at markets, HK’s should be referred to their local DVO or advised to register the animal online. An unregistered animal should not be accepted into markets nor must animals be edited at markets. Keepers should be referred to their local DVO where proper work procedures such as date stamping of all received documents and an audit process can be applied.
Calves can be registered by DARD Portal and the initial contact for queries is Education and Development Branch, College of Agriculture, Food and Rural Enterprise, Greenmount Campus on 028 9442 6699 or Internet address www.ruralni.gov.uk
Definition of Notification Statuses
The statuses that result from a birth notification being received late or not at all are as follows: -
NNO – No Birth Notification
- birth notification (MC1) not received or incomplete or received more than 27 days after DOB (or received more than 185 days after DOB, if DOB before 1st of September 2004).
- this is applied and removed automatically. NNO can be removed if the birth notification (MC1) is received within 27 days of birth.
- ineligible for slaughter for human consumption if it has more than 2 permanent (HARD) teeth. Ineligible for Date Based Export Scheme and live export to GB. Ineligible for OTMS unless it has more than 2 (HARD) teeth and has at least 6 months recorded UK history completed prior to slaughter.
- no further movements are permitted except to slaughter or to OTMS collection centres.
LNO – Late Birth Notifications.
Animals that currently have LNO will retain this status. Animals born before 1 September 2004 will have had LNO applied if the MC1 was received more than 27 days but less than 185 days following birth.
- ineligible for Date Based Export Scheme.
- does not restrict animal movement
NND – No Notification of Death.
If an animal has no death notification or a late death notification then an NND status will be applied to the animal.
Unlike birth notification statuses, it will not be possible for users to manually apply or remove this status.
