Continued Progress Vital for Early OTM Rule Change
04/03/05

Significant progress has been made towards the planned OTM rule change in the three months since its announcement. However, the English Beef and Lamb Executive (EBLEX) has called on all sides of the beef industry to continue to work hard over the coming three months, in particular, to ensure it can be implemented at the earliest possible opportunity.

Despite the progress made to date, EBLEX believes that much remains to be done if both the OTM rule change and a resumption of bone-in exports are to be achieved before the end of 2005.

For beef producers, the priority is to take extra care in identifying animals, maintaining first class traceability through BCMS and avoiding any possibility of OTM animals entering the food chain.

The publication of a complete BCMS handbook for cattle keepers this spring, bringing together the most up-to-date information on all aspects of cattle registration, passports, movements, deaths, identification inspections and statements is a major step forward in this respect. Replacing the many different leaflets available to date, it provides every GB cattle keeper with an invaluable step-by-step guide to ensuring the right levels of identification and traceability.

While the handbook extends to 60 pages, most producers will find its three-page quick guidelines section particularly valuable as a handy immediate reference to precisely what needs to be done in tagging, passport application and use, farm record-keeping and animal movement and death reporting. All the more so for the fact that, unlike so much official documentation, it has been 'clarity approved' by the Plain English Campaign.

Second stage trials are now underway at eight UK abattoirs to ensure a BSE testing regime sufficiently robust to satisfy the Food Standards Agency can be developed and put in place ahead of the rule change. The formal FSA consultation on the OTM exit is imminent. And discussions are moving ahead on a time-limited OTM successor scheme for animals born before August 1996 which will be permanently excluded from the food chain.

At the same time, a small European deputation visited the UK last month to review OTM procedures and controls. And the vital EU Food and Veterinary Office (FVO) inspection mission to assess cattle identification and traceability has been fixed for early June.

As well as making a special effort in cattle traceability, EBLEX advises English suckled calf producers to check their records carefully as soon as possible to establish the number of cattle born before August 1996 remaining in their herds. They should then plan to cull these older animals over a maximum of three years, regardless of their productivity. And, if they wish to maintain suckler cow numbers they must bring sufficient replacements into the herd over the same time-frame - starting from this spring.