Page 2667 - Week 07 - Thursday, 2 August 2018
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about tracking animals being moved around the country and was established to aid with animal disease and food safety management. Animals are required to be tagged before they are moved off their property of birth, and that tag is to remain with the animal for their lifetime.
For people who cannot picture what the tagging is like, it is like piercing their ears. There are different colours for different animals and different years. This traceability mechanism can aid authorities in better managing an animal disease outbreak as they will be able to contact all owners of stock within the relevant area in much faster time frames. The NLIS was an important tool when the national and international outcry about live exports of Australian cattle was being looked into. Being able to trace where animals had come from was a key part of enabling authorities to look into where the cattle that were being put on boats and sent across the oceans had actually come from.
The NLIS is a nationally agreed scheme but needs to be legislated within each jurisdiction. This bill before us today puts into place the ACT’s next steps in updating the scheme to align with improvements that have been nationally agreed with agriculture ministers around the country.
When it was introduced in 1999, the scheme was only for cattle, but in 2009 it was expanded to also include sheep and goats. Pigs have been added to the list of animals that require NLIS identification, from early this year.
The bill creates the requirement for livestock owners in the ACT to obtain a property identification code, PIC, which can be obtained through our Chief Veterinary Officer. All stock will be required to have this code included in their tag information.
The definition of “livestock” for the purposes of this bill is quite broad. It includes not only cattle, sheep, goats and pigs, as per the existing NLIS requirements, but also camelids, equine family members and large and small poultry. To be clear, camelids include not only the obvious camels, but also alpacas and llamas. This bill excludes vicunas and guanacos. The bill includes equine family members—not just horses, but also donkeys, asses, mules and zebras. Large poultry, if you were wondering, includes emus and ostriches.
Any operators of abattoirs, saleyards and stock events in the ACT must obtain a property identification code. The creation of a property identification code will also mean that it will be important to report any stock movements, as otherwise the property code will not match the information behind the tag on each animal. Stock movements will therefore need to be tracked. This is also reflected in the next bill we are going to debate today, the Stock Amendment Bill.
There are some stock movement exemptions within the bill, such as carcasses being moved to the zoo; and there are also provisions that allow for emergency movements such as in floods or fires, which must be sought from, or reported to, the Chief Veterinary Officer.
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