As M. bovis continues to cause significant concern and MPI works to manage it, the Support team at FarmIQ is fielding a lot of questions about NAIT and how FarmIQ can help ease the pain of compliance.
NAIT may not be perfect, but for now at least, it’s what we’ve got, and it remains a critically important tool in our fight against the spread of M. bovis . When the M. bovis news initially broke in July last year, MPI turned to NAIT to help contain the spread of the disease and found the system wanting. The finger was quick to be pointed at farmers for their levels of NAIT compliance, particularly for inter-farm transfers, which is how M. bovis appears to be spreading.
From the research conducted by MPI, it appears there are range of reasons why inter-farm NAIT reporting is lower than it should be, but the one that stands out above the rest is ease of use. NAIT was never really designed for the job that it’s been tasked with today and for a lot of farmers, particularly those with poor connectivity, it’s a pain. The time cost of compliance is something we hear regularly from FarmIQ customers as being one of today’s biggest farming challenges.
If you’ve been following the FarmIQ blog, you’ll have seen a couple of stories featuring FarmIQ users that have been able to minimise the impact of M. bovis on their farms through use of FarmIQ . The common theme throughout these success stories is the diligent on-farm recording of stock movements.
By using FarmIQ to record births, deaths, purchases and stock movements, farmers are able to keep track and report on which animals have come into contact and generate an up-to-the-minute report. Should a farm be unlucky enough to have an M. bovis outbreak, this information is critically important to containing the outbreak. For farmers this is obviously hugely valuable capability in its own right, but that’s not the end of the story.
For FarmIQ customers, stock movements recorded in the system can be automatically sent to NAIT as part of the service. This means that FarmIQ customers not only have a great tool to help them minimise the impact of M. bovis , but they also don’t have to interact with NAIT at all. FarmIQ takes care of NAIT, which saves farmers time and eliminates the risk of non-compliance.
Automatic NAIT reporting is a core feature of all FarmIQ Packs (other than the Map Pack), however it’s not switched on by default. To allow FarmIQ to report to NAIT, customers need to do a few things:
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Give FarmIQ written permission to report to NAIT on their behalf
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Ensure that all NAIT/EID tags are loaded into FarmIQ for all stock
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Maintain an accurate stock rec in FarmIQ by recording all births, deaths, purchases, sales and grazing movements
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Tag all off-farm stock movements (other than sales to a processor) with the NAIT details of the receiving party.
If you’re already a FarmIQ customer and you would like us to manage your NAIT compliance then please contact the Support team. They will need your NAIT number and permission to act as an information provider on your behalf. If you’re not a customer yet, but you’d like someone else to manage your NAIT compliance then call Louise Broad on 0800 FarmIQ (327 647) to sign up.
