THE Katanning saleyards will soon be using electronic National Vendor Declaration (NVD) forms for all stock movements.
The NVD is a paper-based system that was introduced into the Australian red meat industry to create an integrity-backed level of traceability for the movement of animals from their place of origin to the market.
A database records the information on the forms which is entered manually by the receivers of livestock, such as saleyards, feedlots, processors and live exporters.
Aglive WA business development manager Mike Burrell said now that the system was being used across Australia and the paper records needed to be held for several years, the mountain of paper was growing rapidly.
He said Aglive had gone through a development process under the guidelines of Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA) and had developed a digital solution which is fully licenced by the MLA for introduction across Australia.
“This has brought Aglive to the attention of Rod Bushell who manages the Katanning Saleyards and is trialling the introduction of receiving eNVDs (electronic NVDs) into the administration office,” Mr Burrell said.
“The amount of time that is required each week to check forms, make phone calls to correct mistakes and then manually feed the information into the sale catalogue has Rod looking for a better way.”
Mr Burrell said Aglive has enabled Katanning to receive eNVDs and was working on getting producers using the system to show the benefits to all parties.
“The process of introduction is working alongside the existing system to make sure there is a smooth transition,” he said.
“For example, producers are asked to create the NVD on their computer and print out a copy to give to the truck driver.
“By submitting the eNVD from the computer, the saleyard gets an email with the eNVD attached, well before the truck leaves the farm.
“The truck driver has a paper copy to give to the receiver at the saleyard which complies with the existing process.
“Eventually, a receival tower might be put in place to receive all NVDs from arriving trucks allowing for a transition to not having to carry the paper form.”
Mr Burrell said the digital form could be easily incorporated into the sale catalogue and because they were not handwritten, the details were easy to read and mistake free.
“The value of digital information to producers is its ability to stay with the animals right through to the retail shelf,” he said.
“The objective is to see a consumer using a mobile app to swipe a barcode on packaged meat and information coming up on their phone saying this is lamb grown on grass from a farm near Katanning, in Western Australia.
“Valuable feedback to producers can also come from processors by individually supplying carcase information to allow better management of breeding animals.”
Mr Bushell confirmed that eNVDs would be introduced and was looking forward to seeing how the trial went.
