Cattle Passport
The cattle passport has taken three forms.
- From its introduction on 1 July 1996 the passport was a single green A4 paper sheet. This showed details of the animal including its birth-holding details, ear tag number, breed, date of birth, sex and its mother's ear tag number. Also included were a number of sections to be filled in when the animal moved to other holdings, showing the movement date and the new holding number (holdings include other farms, agricultural shows and abattoirs). At the time of its introduction there was no requirement for such movements to be registered centrally. When this requirement was introduced on 28 September 1998, a further A4 document was issued for all existing cattle, to be used in conjuction with the green A4 passport. This was the Certificate of CTS Registration, and it included pre-paid postage tear-off movement cards to be sent to BCMS to register each movement. Movements could be registered using these cards, or electronically by using the new online CTS. Because of the relatively short lifespan of cattle, few green A4 passports remain in use.
- From 28 September 1998 to 2011 the passport was issued as a booklet, made in a similar style to a cheque book. This included the same information as before, but with spaces for bar-coded stickers for holding numbers, and many pages to allow for numerous movements. The prepaid cards were incorporated in the booklet as tear-out pages, so animals with this format of passport did not also need a Certificate of CTS Registration.
- From 1 August 2011 the format returned to a single A4 page. The tear-out cards were omitted, requiring all movements relating to that animal to be reported electronically or by telephone.
Each change only affected new issues of passports, leaving the old passports in circulation and maintaining former reporting methods for them. Replacement passports (for example in case of loss or amendment) are in the format which is current at the time of re-issue.
When an animal dies, the date of death is entered in the passport and this is returned to BCMS. The death may also be notified electronically.
If the rules for animal registration (and thus animal traceability) are not followed correctly, a passport will not be issued (this is most commonly where the deadline for calf registration is missed, of 28 days from birth). Instead the animal will receive an A4 Notice of Registration document (similar to the Certificate of CTS Registration), and its details will be held on the CTS. Such an animal may be used for breeding, but it may not enter the human food chain and it may not normally move between holdings except to slaughter.
Read more about this topic: British Cattle Movement Service
Famous quotes containing the words cattle and/or passport:
“He who steals chickens as a child will steal cattle as an adult.”
—Chinese proverb.
“Whenever [Leonard Bernstein] entered or exited a country he would fill in on his passport form not composer or conductor, but musician. Of course people in the press spent a lot of Lenny’s life telling him what he should have done; he should have been a concert pianist, he should have composed more.... And people wouldn’t let him live his own life. But he created his own career, in his own image.”
—John Mauceri (b. 1945)