Vol. 507 No. 2
102 Mr. McGrath asked the Minister for Agriculture and Food the official format for the new herd register to be kept by farmers; the authority or regulation his Department approves, particularly software packages for a computerised version for this register; and if an inspector of his Department will require access to the computer hardware or if access to a printout of the information will suffice on inspection of a computerised herd register. [16753/99]
EU legislation requires herdowners to keep herd registers of bovine animals and prescribes the information that the register must contain. The consolidated herd register book that my Department recently supplied to herdowners is designed to enable herdowners to record all of the required information. The details that must be recorded in respect of each animal are – date of birth – this is not required for animals tagged before the introduction of the plastic tagging system in 1996 – breed-colour; sex; in the case of an animal moved off the holding, the date of movement and the name and address, or herd number-mart number, of the new owner-keeper; and in the case of an animal that dies on the holding, the date of death and the method of disposal of the carcase.
