Some 60 million animal identification passports – known by many as ‘blue cards‘ – have been issued over the last 25 years since 1996, as Capita Customer Solutions (CCS) hit a milestone of 25 years of calf registrations this year.
Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Charlie McConalogue, visited the CCS offices in Clonakilty recently, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its calf registration and passport issuing contract.
The contract, originally awarded to CCS by the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine (DAFM) in 1996, “is the foundation on which the traceability of the Irish cattle population is based”, the company claims.
As part of the National Cattle Traceability Service, the CCS teams in Bandon and Clonakilty in west Cork have registered and issued passports for almost 60 million calves since the inception of the contract in 1996.
During the visit, Minister McConalogue said:
“The ‘blue cards’ are known in every farm family household across the country and are an integral part of our world-class bovine traceability system.
“The relationship between the farmers of Ireland, the department and CSS has served our sector well over the past quarter of a century.”
Including the DAFM team, Capita Customer Solutions (CCS) employs over 1,200 people in Ireland in locations across Cork and Sligo.
Welcoming the minister to the offices, managing director of Capita Customer Solutions Paddy Morrissey said:
“Our team also carries out more than 23,000 on-farm audits annually, on behalf of Bord Bia.
“These cattle traceability systems and farm audits reassure both national and international consumers that the food they eat is produced to the highest quality and can be traced back to their original source.
“Our DAFM team now proudly manages the movement of four million pigs and 2.45 million bovine registrations annually – with February 2021 being our busiest month to date with 630,400 registrations.”