A bright digital future for cows and sows

Russia has become the world’s fourth largest supplier of meat after China, the USA and Brazil. Last year, we delivered to seventy countries of the world, and this figure will grow.

There are two bad things. Small Japan produces as many as four million tons of meat every year, and huge Russia only eleven. And further. Russia is the only one of the major meat suppliers where there is no unified registration of animals. It will be introduced at the federal level from 2024.

It is proposed to register dairy cows (chipping) and bulls for meat (ear tags), as well as sheep, goats, pigs and, possibly, camels. Animals can be marked both by specialists of the state veterinary service and by the own specialists of the agricultural enterprise.

Fifteen million heads of cattle and small cattle have already been registered on a voluntary basis. The tags are paired because they are often lost. One cow can have up to five tags and will have a sixth. This was discussed on Monday, March 13, at a round table of the State Duma Committee on Agrarian Issues on the topic: “Identification and accounting of animals in accordance with Federal Law No. 221-FZ of 06/28/2022. Functioning of the Horriot Module in FSIS “VetIS”.

The abracadabra indicated in the name of the event actually refers to serious and expensive digital projects, components or modules of the future livestock accounting system. They are developing the “Mercury” system – a state system for quality control of animal products. In the future, the system will include a genetic passport, that is, it will replace the lost system of stud books.

The transmission of data on diseases and other events with animals from birth to natural death or slaughter is carried out exclusively in electronic form, subject to reliability. They promise not to label each bee. There is no talk of accounting for fur-bearing predatory animals and horses. As well as about producers in pond fish farming.

There are many problems and misunderstandings in the development of the animal registration system. Farm animals are distributed among three types of farms. Large agricultural enterprises are keenly interested in registration and are already doing it. Accordingly, there are fears that when integrating into the federal system, they may force everything to be redone. This is exactly what happened with alcohol accounting systems.

Peasant farms are growing intensively in the number of livestock. They are also interested in registering animals, but here the problem arises of explaining the essence of a bright digital future for cows. There should be a simple language, not the one in which laws are written. When registering each cow, it is required to indicate the personal data of the owner of the farm, and this raises concerns regarding their protection and possible problems with Roskomnadzor.

The State Duma Committee on Legislation refused to accept amendments to the Administrative Code under the pretext of developing a new comprehensive code in the Ministry of Justice. The story has been going on for seven years. Presumably for the first violation the liability will be small, for the second one it will be much higher. Even more problems with personal subsidiary plots. To receive state support, the livestock grows fabulously, for accounting it is reduced.

The round table was held by Sergey Lisovsky, a member of the State Duma Committee on Agrarian Issues. He warned that household plots would resist accounting.

Lisovsky, to put it mildly, is not new to the problem and knows well how convenient labeling is. The computer reads data from the cow’s ear and gives her a personal diet.

Lisovsky is dissatisfied with how much the law on marking animals has been slowed down by attaching dogs and cats to it. Who travels with a dog abroad, microchips it at his own expense without further ado. You can’t intimidate everyone else with any responsibility. Moreover, the chip contains information about the veterinary clinic, but not about the animal, and is useless for the purposes of searching for missing animals.

For reasons unknown to Lisovsky, the Ministry of Digital Development does not take part in the process. The deputy hopes that this ministry will finally work. There is another ministry that would be better off not working at all. The Ministry of Economics at first rejects any innovations, and it takes a long time to negotiate. In my opinion, the Ministry of Economic Development hinders the economic development of the country.

Be that as it may, the long-awaited animal registration law has been passed. By-laws must be developed and submitted for registration to the Ministry of Justice no later than November.

The people who do this are real ascetics. Unfortunately, there are no professionals with education in the field of genetics and breeding. Accordingly, zoning and breeding are not discussed at all. Breeding animals are bought abroad and immediately allowed for breeding. Considering the mass of features of huge Russia, this is wrong.

Lev MOSKOVKIN.

Image generation artbreeder.com