A single national database including the breeding and performance records of more than 75% of all the UK's milk-recorded cows, has been officially launched to provide the UK dairy farming industry with more consistent, reliable and economic animal performance and welfare improvement information.

The Centre for Dairy Information (CDI) is the culmination of more than five years hard work by leading UK dairy information providers to reduce duplication and cost while improving the accuracy and value of dairy animal performance, type and ancestry record-keeping.

It involves the major UK dairy breed societies and two of the country's three official milk recording organisations pooling their information in a fully-unified database run independently for the benefit of farmers and the industry.

"For the first time ever, farmers have fast, convenient and confidential 24-hour access to all the data held on every one of their animals in the same format from a single reliable source," explained the driving force behind the project, Holstein UK chief executive, David Hewitt at CDI's national industry launch.

"At the same time, the wider industry has comprehensive, high quality, aggregate data to support its improvement efforts. It also has an up-to-date information resource with which to far more effectively respond to growing demands for animal health and welfare and farm and food assurance.

"A single information resource has long under-pinned the successful improvement efforts of Sweden, Holland, Denmark, Italy and other leading European dairy countries," he pointed out. "As well as fulfilling the widely-acclaimed Wilson Vision for UK animal data management, CDI represents a major step towards meeting the Curry Commission's challenge of better co-operation and integration throughout our industry.

"Bringing it to fruition certainly hasn't been easy. After all, everyone involved has had to give-up a substantial measure of long-cherished independence in information processing and storage.

"I would like to pay tribute to the way the founder organisations - Holstein UK, British Friesian Breeders, the Jersey Cattle Society of the UK, the English Guernsey Cattle Society, Cattle Information Service and United Dairy Farmers - have been able to overcome these hurdles in the broader industry interest.

"We are in active discussion with a number of other cattle breed societies, and very much hope NMR will also feel able to join our national co-operative venture in the near future."

Located at Scotsbridge House, Rickmansworth, CDI will be run as a non-profit making organisation by a small independent board.

Chaired by industry authority and vice-chairman of the Defra Science Advisory Council, Professor Sir John Marsh, initial board appointments include Holstein breeder Tim Gue; Brian Hunter of UDF; and Paul Westaway representing the National Association of Breeding Suppliers (NABS).

As a completely open database, CDI allows inputs from all data providers meeting its standards; provides farmers with password-protected access to their herd data; and makes aggregate information available to the industry under strict data protection rules.

With its integral passport and movement services, the organisation becomes the single largest provider of cattle information to the British Cattle Movement Service.

A special CDI website is to be introduced over the summer as the main access point for farmer and industry users, under the guidance of Holstein UK breeding research manager, Lucy Andrews who has been seconded to head-up the development of CDI's communications.

"With the core functions of CDI up-and-running, individual producers and the industry at large now have a hugely valuable nationwide information and improvement resource at their disposal," said David Hewitt. "We plan to increase this value progressively in the future through a host of new initiatives and industry links.

"Working with key on-farm computing concept partners, Orchid, Sum-It and Uniform Agri, for instance, we have ensured the database is fully compatible with 99% of the country's automated parlours. This is allowing producers who do their own electronic recording to take advantage of our unique PIN-protected paperless systems.

"Since we brought about the unification of the two black and white dairy breed societies in 1999, we have been relentless in our drive to eliminate duplication, improve efficiency and cut costs in pedigree herd record-keeping," he concluded. "In this time we have been able to reduce registration costs by as much as 35%.

"CDI will, we hope, bring such record-keeping advantages and economies to a far wider section of the UK dairy industry. We look forward to it acting as an important catalyst to even greater integration of dairy information provision in the coming year and beyond."