We have had the National Livestock Identification System [NLIS] in Australia for a couple of years now and our cattle have to have the buttons in their ears before they go through the sale yards. Each of our properties has a property number and the tags are issued promptly and relatively inexpensively on request. They really aren’t any great bother. We have to tag only sheep and cattle.

Second Opinion
by Rob Johnson

The newspapers here in Australia reported about a calf buyer who claims that only 85% of the 12,000 weaner cattle his company bought last summer were transferred correctly on the NLIS database. A Department of Primary Industries spokeswoman countered that 51 buyer audits were held in Victoria since late 2004, consisting of calling buyers to verify they had purchased the number of cattle specified, and asking if the animals had been transferred to their Property Identification Code [PIC] number, and 98.4% of the cattle had been transferred accurately. However, a contract eartag scanner said the only way to know if the same cattle that were transferred on computer actually physically arrived at a certain PIC is to rescan them on-property, but “To my knowledge, no one has the capacity or ability to check that.”

Some feedlots now apply discounts of 5 to 10 cents per kilogram for cattle that lost their lifetime traceability status. For a 450-kilogram feeder steer, this discount can mean a loss of AU$45 a head (about US$35/1,000-pound steer) for each animal that hasn’t had every property movement accurately recorded on the database.

NLIS has been in effect here coming on two years. I haven’t registered my place, and I am selling cattle to a neighbor who also isn’t registered. There is one heck of an underground trade, making the whole thing pointless. I’ve always been opposed to it, but I can mount arguments for its implementation in the bigger picture. In theory it gives the customer what he wants, but in reality it has lots of big holes.

At the last bullocky [ox drover] meeting I raised the subject of just how ridiculous NLIS is, and plenty of people there were in total agreement. NLIS had just bogged them down in paperwork.

Our Patron is a retiring senator. His advise? “Just ignore it!” Which is what everybody who can already does. So it’s only those who put stock through the market that it affects. Hardly a watertight system!

Lynda Griffiths and Rob Johnson both live in Victoria, Australia. Their letters appeared in the Autumn 2006 issue of Rural Heritage.