Abstract

According to the EU regulation 2016/429, EU-members are obliged to have a Identification & Registration (I&R) system for animals. These systems contain a lot of data on individual animals like bovine or groups of animals like pigs and chickens. Examples of the data registered are date of birth ad current and previous locations of residence. In the Netherlands, the Netherlands Enterprise Agency (RVO) is responsible for the Dutch systems. There are I&R systems for bovine, pigs, poultry, sheep and goats, and horses.

Data on the number of animals slaughtered (monthly and yearly) including the total meat production and the yearly organic meat production are already being delivered to Eurostat. Experiences with the current methods used for calculating the (organic) meat production raised questions about the quality of some of the data used. Furthermore, the data used do not distinguish between organic and conventional livestock. With the new Statistics on Agricultural Inputs and Outputs (SAIO) regulations we want to improve the quality of the data on meat production and explore the possibilities of the using of data from the different I&R systems.

With the new SAIO, the data on organic slaughtered animals and meat production has been integrated in the dataset on animal production. Within the project we also want to investigate how to use the I&R data for calculating the number of slaughtered organic animals as input for the meat production. Since the data used for the organic production and regular production will come from the same source (i.e. the I&R system). This improves the comparability between the calculated figures of the two types of meat production.

In 2024, we started working on the new system for calculating bovine meat production. This has given us more insight into the usability of the existing registers and also into building a system for calculating the production of different types of meat. Currently, the system for the bovine meat production is being tested and the system for goats and sheep meat production is being built. Meanwhile, preparations for the development of the system for calculating pork production are in full swing.

The presentation will focus on two topics:
1. The experiences we had with the use of I&R registers for statistical purposes. Since every EU-member state has similar I&R systems (see article 109(1) of the EU regulation 2016/429) these experiences might be valuable.
2. The methods used for calculating the meat production for the different types of animals and for organic meat production.