Tens of thousands of animal movements, thousands of animal births and thousands of animals being moved to meat plants have all been registered in the first four days of the bovine functionality going live on the Northern Ireland Farm Animal Information System (NIFAIS). This latest deployment is a major step towards fully replacing the Animal and Public Health System (APHIS) by 2025.

Farm Animal Information System (NIFAIS). This latest deployment is a major step towards fully replacing the Animal and Public Health System (APHIS) by 2025.

APHIS was continually developed over a 25-year period and was unique as a fully integrated traceability and disease control system.

The new system will allow continued access to:

• online registrations of animal births, deaths and movements including integrations with markets and renderers;
• farm software package integration;
• meat plant integrations - ensuring the integrity of the food chain information and public health systems for locally produced meat products;
• disease control systems for all bovine animals in Northern Ireland including interface with AFBI laboratories, and
•  facilitating the Northern Ireland Farm Quality Assurance Scheme.

In the first 4 days since going live there have been:

• 2,123 farmer or agent accounts accessing NIFAIS online.
• 4,232 birth registrations.
• 22,194 animal movements recorded.
• 132 PVP users accessing system for TB testing.

Head of the NIFAIS project, Nigel Trimble, said NIFAIS will address legacy technology and security risks associated with APHIS and improve functionality and services available to the agri-food sector in Northern Ireland.

"Replacing APHIS is a complex task and last weekend around 300 million pieces of data were either lifted from APHIS or loaded into NIFAIS. This makes NIFAIS one of the largest and most complex systems ever delivered by DAERA.

"As with any complex IT system roll-out, there have been some teething issues, including system performance, which we are working to address as quickly as possible and our thanks to all the users including farmers, Private Veterinary Practices and the livestock marts and meat plants for their continued patience as  the system becomes fully embedded," he said.

"We are aware that some users, especially farmers and veterinary practitioners, are not set up correctly for accessing NIFAIS through Government Gateway authentication and we continue to work  with these users to address this. 

"Some online users will also not have access to all the herds they previously could view on APHIS due to revised DAERA policy implemented on NIFAIS which restricts access to herds online to the herd keeper or an agent appointed by them. Anyone needing a NIFAIS agent approved for online access should contact their DAERA Direct office. Other issues noted this week were an inability to confirm some moves online," Mr Trimble added.

He stressed that users can confirm moves using MC2 documentation or via DAERA telephony system to avoid imposition of Late Movement Notification statuses if they are unable to do so online.

Veterinary Practitioners approved to carry out TB testing must register with DAERA and those requiring access to NIFAIS ePVP system can request this if necessary.

APHIS remains in place for non-bovine functionality, and these species will move onto NIFAIS by April 2025.

For more information please visit our website or your local DAERA Direct office.