Day 111 - 30 Mar 95 - Page 58
1
2 You can usually find out where the animal has come from,
3 either the auctioneer or the last farm that it has come
4 from. A lot of culled cows do come through mediators who
5 buy a lot of culled cows from farms, then they sell them in
6 batches to auctioneers at the cattle markets and the
7 auctioneers sell them to slaughterhouses.
8
9 Basically, the only additional information you can get is
10 the official ear tag that the animal carries. This is a
11 small metal tag that is attached to the animal's ear at
12 birth and should follow the animal throughout its life. In
13 many cases, it does not and the animal is re-numbered
14 during its life on another farm.
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16 It is generally acknowledged in this country that
17 traceability is very poor. That is why there are very few
18 epidemic surveys, for example, done at the abattoirs
19 post-mortem, on the basis of post-mortem findings which is
20 quite common in countries where the traceability is better.
21
22 MR. JUSTICE BELL: If an animal is re-tagged, does it have a
23 date of the tagging on the tag?
24 A. No. It only has a running number and the owner's herd
25 number on that tag, so if the owner has changed, the herd
26 number has changed as well and the origin of the animal is
27 lost.
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29 MR. MORRIS: During the slaughter of the animal, the deboning
30 and all that, what happens to the tag number? What happens
31 to it if it is on it?
32 A. It is used to identify the owner if it is a direct sale
33 from the farm and the farmer gives that as the
34 identification number. Normally in cattle markets cattle
35 are re-tagged with a shorter ear number, like I saw in some
36 of the documents that Jarrett has handed over, there were
37 ear numbers on steers. Those were short, plastic tag ear
38 numbers that are used usually by the marketeers. They are
39 easily read. These small metal tags are very small, they
40 are about the length my forefinger and the numbers are
41 printed in the metal. You have to catch the animal, hold
42 its ear still and read the number from both sides; the herd
43 number is on the inside and the running number is on the
44 outside. The auctioneers like to use these big plastic
45 tags that you can read the animal's ear number from a
46 distance.
47
48 Q. So if an animal comes from a market into Jarretts, is it
49 true that the only information you would know about that
50 animal is which market it came from?
51 A. Which auctioneer and market, yes. Then it would
52 probably be possible on the basis of paperwork from the
53 auctioneer to trace back to the person who sold the animal.
54
55 MR. JUSTICE BELL: You would find who had put it into auction?
56 A. Yes.
57
58 MR. MORRIS: But Jarretts would not know that information?
59 A. They could find it out, if they wanted to.
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