To identify and register bovine animals in order to restore consumer confidence, this is the main
aim of the report by Mr Xaver MAYER (PPE, D), adopted unanimously with 1 abstention by the
committee (chairman: Mr José HAPPART (PSE, B)).
The regulation proposed by the European Commission in the wake of the BSE crisis provides for
the system to identify and register bovine animals to include the following: computerized data
bases, earmarking to identify individual animals, animal passports and individual registers on
each holding.
The committee amended the Commission text and proposed that these "technical infrastructures
should be of a comparable level in all Member States" and called for their harmonization to be
assured by adequate funding by the European Commission. The data base should be fully
operational by 31 December 1997: by that date it should contain "birth and slaughter data" and
should contain all other data from 31 December 1998 at the latest. The committee also called for
these data bases to be "accessible to consumer protection organizations in well-founded cases
recognized by the national bodies".
With regard to ear-tags, the committee proposed that they should be applied within 30 days of the
birth of the animal (and not 14 days as proposed by the European Commission) and, in any case,
"before the animal leaves the holding on which it was born". These ear-tags should be "of a
standardized type, approved, not forgeable and legible throughout the animal's life". They should
have the same single identification code. When they become illegible or if they are lost, the
competent office must issue a replacement tag.
The passport must be issued to each animal to which an ear-tag has been allocated and must
"accompany the animals during any movement". The animal keeper "is required to activate the
associated passport after attaching the ear-tag". Animals imported from third countries shall
receive on entry into the Union a passport corresponding to the ear-tag. If it is guaranteed that the
central data base contains all the information provided for and that all animal movements are
registered in it, the Member States may dispense with the introduction of animal passports.�