NSA welcomes advancement in traceability work
11th October 2019
The National Sheep Association (NSA) is pleased and encouraged that Defra has now fully approved the funding for a new statutory multi-species livestock traceability service, giving the mandate for the design and delivery of the service to a newly formed company, Livestock Information Ltd, created by AHDB.
This is the culmination of the work done over the last two years by TDUG (the Traceability Design Users Group) working on the Livestock Information Programme and led by Defra programme Director Simon Hall who has now moved across to become Managing Director of the new company.
Livestock Information Ltd (LI Ltd) is established as a not for profit subsidiary of AHDB in which Defra has a 49% stake. Its ambition is to work collaboratively with the livestock industry and Government to develop a world-leading multi-species livestock information service that will start to be implemented from late 2020.
Alongside the formation of this new company and the confirmation of funding, LI Ltd has purchased an initial technology platform from Shearwell Data, a purchase tendering process that was rigorous and open, providing a product on which LI Ltd will build the new Livestock Information Service. For sheep farmers, this will eventually replace ARAMS in England.
NSA Chief Executive Phil Stocker explains: “This is great news that has come about through a huge investment by both industry and Government. The process has led the way towards a new relationship between Defra and industry that will have positive spin-offs in other areas of work but in relation to livestock traceability we now have a professional and modern business structure and enthusiastic and capable team, and with the purchase of the technology platform a very good base from which to work.
“All this work is running alongside discussions and developments on traceability policy with the aim of having practical and easy to use approaches that deliver effective traceability for both disease security and food confidence purposes. On behalf of NSA, I’d like to thank everyone who has played a role in getting this far, in particular to Simon Hall who is now Managing Director of LI Ltd and has driven this work for the last two years.”
