The Nandi County Department of Agriculture and Cooperative Development in liaison with CAISLEY INTERNATIONAL, ADGG, ILRI, and KALRO on Tuesday, June 14, 2022, held a stakeholder engagement forum with farmers’ representatives, from over 17 dairy cooperatives across the county, with a view of introducing the important component of modern animal identification.
Globally, animal identification and traceability are recognized as important components of the management of animal and human health and food safety.
Digital animal identification systems read/scan information from modern ear tags with unique numbers and barcodes affixed to individual cows.
It collects and records information regarding mandatorily identifiable animals, their keepers, and keeping locations.
Additional systems are also available to automatically collect a variety of data for the identified animal including information on their birth and origin, vaccination status, illnesses – in case of occurrence, health condition, and slaughterhouses, to document the full path of animals from farm to the plate.
These data are sent to a central collection point where they are organized, analyzed, and stored by a computer-based records system. Records systems will help to identify animal health problems and determine reproductive status.
The data is also crucial in ensuring food quality, disease control, environment, and climate change, animal genetic resource, stock theft mitigation, governance, market access, herd management, and genetic improvement.
Farmers are therefore encouraged to adopt the modern animal identification and traceability systems which has the potential to help farmers in registration, getting more benefits from county programs, and selling more products.
All this together serves the consumers’ interests, it insures the development of the new farming standards and the increase of credibility of Nandi Dairy products for both local and future export markets.
