By Allan Barber
A friend who has a lifestyle block near Warkworth recently asked me to take up the matter of the lack of reliability of NAIT records, citing his experience as evidence the system is still far from foolproof. I asked him to send me some details or even better to write to NAIT explaining his problem and asking for a response.
He sent a very clear and concise explanation marked for the attention of the Chief Executive about five weeks ago and has received a holding reply which said somebody would get back to him after Fielddays. Now the timeframe here isn’t particularly long, but what is of greater concern is the time taken to correct some fairly basic mistakes.
After all NAIT finally passed into law in February 2012, nearly 3½ years ago, after a gestation period which made an elephant’s pregnancy seem fast.
Yet we are still faced with a fundamental inability to guarantee the accuracy of cattle numbers on a property, as well as loopholes in the tag numbers that apply to those cattle.
My friend’s concerns started when he discovered a rogue heifer among his steers, scanned the tag and phoned NAIT to ask them to trace it, but without success.
He then discovered the NAIT system still recorded 60 cattle on his farm, although 15 of these had long since gone to the saleyard and then to the works for slaughter.
He checked NAIT’s movement records against his own and these matched, but he had no way of telling which of the cattle had left the property.
Apparently the NAIT system has now correctly recorded all the movements, but obviously this would have been far too late in the event of a disease outbreak. He also raised the question of replacing lost tags which farmers are required to do, but without a scanner neither the farm nor NAIT would be able to record the individual animal’s number.
Furthermore there are two different types of tag, one flat and one with a raised centre, and not all scanners work on both types of tag.
Armed with all this experience he then proceeded to contact other farmers and gave up after about 10 because he had been unable to find a single farmer who believed the NAIT book accurately corresponded to their actual stock on the farm. One stud breeder actually went to the trouble and expense of buying another set of traditional tags with the same numbers as the NAIT tags in case any of the cattle lost one tag (but hopefully not two).
As my friend says, this set of circumstances makes NAIT virtually useless in the event of a disease outbreak, without even taking into consideration the inevitable effect of not including sheep in NAIT. His suggestion is to ensure all farms have a scanner which can read both types of tag and is compatible with the NAIT system. Every farm would be responsible for scanning stock at least once a year and uploading the data to NAIT.
He also says scanners are available in the UK for less than $200, not the high cost being charged in New Zealand.
NAIT may have some logical responses to all these queries, but it is disappointing none of the farmers contacted has confidence in the accuracy of the system.
This is hardly a ringing endorsement of at least eight years of hard work and the cost imposed on farmers since it passed into law in 2012.
If it is to gain farmers’ confidence, NAIT needs to address these issues urgently.
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Allan Barber is a commentator on agribusiness, especially the meat industry, and lives in the Matakana Wine Country. He is chairman of the Warkworth A&P Show Committee. You can contact him by email at allan@barberstrategic.co.nz or read his blog here ». This article first appeared in Farmers Weekly. It is here with permission.
11 Comments
As a farmer that uses the Nait system, I believe the basic idea of it is fine. But some of the tags themselves are rubbish and don't read properly, the software they use is excel (old rubbish) which is not user friendly, When I try to enter my tag numbers the nait person i deal with tells me it's easier for me to email them the numbers and they will input them for me. It's almost as those the system has been designed to be inefficient to create more jobs. The handheld scanners ( i call them a beep stick) are hardly the most cutting edge technology and most sell for $1,200 to $1500 ( a rip off and i refuse to buy one, i just borrow one.). How can you get farmers to take the system seriously, if the system itself is crap. Just another another government rip off. Having said that I don't blame the people you deal with on the phones, they try and do a good job.
The scanner itself isn't the problem. the technology and frequency chosen for NAIT is not particularly well designed for distance reading. It more closely resembles dog microchips that can be read by a vet or animal shelter who have hands on the animal.
By far the biggest problem, which is a catch22 is that the tags, in order not to catch on fences and other stock, are very small. But in being small they can't be identified by eye, also the code is very long rather than 4 or 5 numbers that can clearly be put on a visual tag.
My tracking was through the LIC MINDA system which made an good intermediary but it did introduce etra cost with the paralleling up of herd ID (cow number), LIC code 4 letters, 2 digit for year, and extra sequential number 01+, and the NAIT code handled by the MINDA software.
I kept on top of movements within allotted time (my employment contract paid an extra $15k more for "Person Responsible for Animals" as my original contract was specifically an "reasonable efforts, no responsibility" clause). but it was not unusual for the other party to take a week to electronically acknowledge stock movements. But because few have scanners at the receiving point, it is difficult to do (and risky).
And even though I did that, I got home one weekend in november (mating time) to find that someone had put 12 yearling bulls in one of my paddocks. I carry no bulls.
I called NAIT. no answer.
I called the animal control people on the council. They couldn't do anything since we didn't know whose they were.
None of my near neighbours carry that breed.
Finally got hold of NAIT and asked how we identify them. Their answer was to use the scanner (which we didn't have), nor are my yards set up for personal handling of stock (it's all done in dairy shed), my yards weren't even setup for handling bulls or steers !! Not only that but NAIT said they couldn't actually tell me who owned them anyway because of privacy rules !!!!!! Nor were they supposed to tell outside people, eg the animal control guy from the council.
If those had been diseased animals, or even just got into the herd, it would have been catastrophic.
The NAIT system is not setup for it's decreed job and I doubt those running it (at political level) even comprehend or care that it's non-functional, only that it ticks kpi boxes.
I hope they've taken on my recommendations that councils get a scanner, and that NAIT clears animal control officers to be a valid emergency party in regards to misplaced animals.
But like the dead animal/vet debacle it'll likely fall on uncaring ears. The dead animal/vet is a classic. What do we do with an animal that dies of disease, even a contagious disease? We can't truck it, so we dump it or call a knacker. But the animals NAIT record finishes at death. And there's no way for a vet to tag suspect animals. So if an outbreak does occur, the MOST dangerous animals won't even show up in the NAIT system at all, nor will patients 0+ be trackable. NAIT simply does not have that functionality in their systems design or their reporting/tracking ability.
The only thing it does do (apart from tick boxes) is allows all the heads of cattle to be counted by government for use in loans/commodity securities (at government borrowing tier)....
The did some tests in Aussie and it failed. I think there was advice given in NZ that the system was full of holes and would fail. In the USA they have given up according to my ranching friends.
I personally find it a nightmare. Buying out of the store where they have a %10 failure rate, but which one? I kill cattle double check all the tags and then the works tell me I had 21 cattle that they couldn't read. NZ is beginning to lead the way in loading farmers up with layer after layer of bureaucracy and cost. I wonder when it's going to end.
The fact that the last possum is going to cost, slightly more to kill than the first one, that pigs can carry, that TB has nuances that we don't understand yet.
I have a friend in the industry and he tells me it's full of people in offices making sweeping assumptions about things they don't understand, who are very conscious of the need for job security. He talked of the waste but I asked him to stop as it was distressing and outside my control.
I don't think it was ever needed just another Quango, on which others can attach themselves.
example
As part of the TB Plan review, it is proposed to evolve the current disease testing approach to more closely and accurately target the risk of infection and management of disease at herd level. This would be a significantly enhanced approach to risk based testing (RBT), now possible due to NAIT data and deeper information and knowledge about disease control. This approach would be phased in over a period of a short number of years.
In addition, improvements in NAIT functionality would allow the recording of TB risk status. In time, this is likely to be used by farmers as a market signal (i.e. animals that have a medium to high risk rating, which will require additional TB testing,would have a lower market value)
http://www.ospri.co.nz/Portals/1/Documents/Factsheets/FACTSHEET%202015-…
I think that what these government departments don't realise is that farmers are either in recession or heading that way and need to cut costs. Your comment about them only worrying about job security is right on the money.
The TB one is interesting, thanks for pointing that out. Farmers will probably have to try and finish their own stock in high risk areas, difficult if you are on hard country, or as you say , sell at a discount. I breed cattle in a high risk area, but lease another farm and finish everything.
The government is becoming the welfare center for the middle classes those who couldn't find real work in the private sector, those who were put through the university system with high expectations, degrees that were never needed in the past. Unfortunately they all want private sector wages and benefits, don't forget civil servants get an extra weeks holiday, they need 5 weeks because the job is harder than the private sector equivalent.
It always has been Andrewj, although the rise of the bureaucratic class pitched to the public who would pay for it, on the basis that they would serve the public interest, promote economic efficiency, and greater prosperity for all.
The phenomenon was described sympathetically, by the American journalist, Walter Lippman
"The Great Society had grown furiously and to colossal dimensions by the application of technical knowledge. It was made by engineers who had learned to use exact measurements and quantitative analysis. It could not be governed, men began to discover, by men who thought deductively about rights and wrongs. It could be brought under human control only by the technic which had created it. Gradually, then, the more enlightened directing minds have called in experts who were trained, or had trained themselves, to make parts of this Great Society intelligible to those who manage it. These men are known by all kinds of names, as statisticians, accountants, auditors, industrial counsellors, engineers of many species, scientific managers, personnel administrators, research men, "scientists," and sometimes just as plain private secretaries [pp. 233-234]."
George Orwell described in his dystopian novel, Nineteen Eighty Four, how the ruling classes of Oceania was composed of, "“the new aristocracy was made up for the most part of bureaucrats, scientists, technicians, trade-union organizers, publicity experts, sociologists, teachers, journalists, and professional politicians. These people, whose origins lay in the salaried middle class and the upper grades of the working class, had been shaped and brought together by the barren world
of monopoly industry and centralized government. As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, they were less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition.”
https://libcom.org/library/rebellion-conservatism-lessons-1984-jean-cla…
"As far back as 1942, Joseph Schumpeter wrote that the expansion of higher education beyond labor-market demand creates for white collar workers “employment in substandard work or at wages below those of the better-paid manual workers.” What’s more, “it may create unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type. The man who has gone through college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work.”
The current glut of college graduates, many of them with heavy debt loads, may need to overcome this problem of being “psychically” (not physically) unemployable in manual occupations, a disability acquired from sitting in classrooms from age 5 to age 22. I am happy to report that it is possible. After getting a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, followed by another prestigious-sounding but soul-killing job at a think tank, I opened a motorcycle repair shop."
http://www.forbes.com/2009/06/17/skilled-trades-jobs-business-crawford…
Yes the Nait system is riddled with errors, I don't have the correct stock numbers on my Nait accounts and it is time consuming work to try and sort it out.
The meat processors are not doing their jobs well either, and seem to be causing many of the errors. I have had animals taken off my Nait account by meatworks we have never dealt with before, because either the works made an error on their end, or a farmer accidentally wrote my Nait number instead of their own on the ASD.
It took ages to sort out as well, as the works were not prepared to consider they may have made an error.
I get around the problem of works not reading tags and then penalizing farmers for it by scanning all my cattle as they leave the farm, then if the works say they had some without tags I send them the CSV file from my scales and tell them to sort out which ones they are missing- have never been fined for missing tags since I started doing that, but of course I had to buy $6,500 of equipment and learn to use all the relevant computer programs to do that so it is not cheap or easy.
I would have picked that you knew better than that :)
I considered it but without any way to human verify the tag/animal it simply wasn't an option.
If an animal got in the herd, or I had one missing, it'd have to put every animal past an electronic scan. meaning gear and computers that work reliably in tough places. nope - this IT guy will stick to pencil and notebook as primary record keeping system.
I had a notebook each year. Only one per year (tried two but it created gaps).
Calving.
date - cow# - calfgender - fate (or calf assigned #) - notes. one line every time.
Mating
date.
cow#
cow#
...
cow#.
count of cows presented to AI (with circle around it). copy from book to AI forms/books.
Incoming stock.
Date. From who. number animals.
Each animals incoming cow#
Each animals incoming cow#
Each animals incoming cow#
number animals received (circled).
Outgoing stock.
Date. Destination.
Cow#
...
Cow#
number of animals departing(circled)
Renumbering
cows old #, LIC ID, new cow #, NAIT
NAIT tag
my cow#, LIC ID, NAIT
Dead cows at the back of book
Date.
Cow#; reason for death;
disposal location.
Every Date entry gets a line across the page underneath the section.
Very simple system to use.
Very fast.
Primary system so all data is in this location and it is golden (authoritative). no cross updating.
Keeping the mating and calving stuff short meant I could allocate 5-10 pages for that section, and so information on such events was sequential and in one location. It also meant I could update it almost anywhere, very quickly, and not try to remember things.
Keeping it simple also meant it was easy to update electronic and home records (secondary store) and I didn't put it off as "another big hassle".
MINDA has reports it can run for retagging and incoming animals but I found them best as secondary sources to copy out of my notebook, and thus act as a check system, and easy to go back through notebook to find answers, or re-read animals if things not line up - as notebook tracked every change.
The MINDA printed pages laid things out nicely, thus went into the filing cabinet after I used them for data entry into the computer - I knew if notebook didn't let me update the MINDA form, then I wouldn't be able to update that computer records. and storing the forms meant that anyone else chasing anything up could recognise the standard form (as opposed to working out why I had a total of 9 different cow #69 go through my notebook)
When you think about it , because of the flaws in the system, Nait doesn't offer any improvement over the old system and is more expensive time consuming and the tags are too small to be read by eye ( without restraining the animal). Makes you wonder how some companies are inventing driverless cars and farming companies can't even make a decent electronic tag. i guess to them making a crappy tag is like printing money, they are laughing all the way to the bank.
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