The Cabinet Secretary for Environment and Rural Affairs, Lesley Griffiths, has today launched a new system for defining agricultural holdings and registering temporary land in Wales.
This was published under the 2016 to 2021 administration of the Welsh Government
The County Parish Holding (CPH) identifier is key in identifying and tracing the location of cattle, sheep, goats and pigs.
Improvements to the CPH system will provide a quicker and more effective response to any animal disease outbreak and will harmonise movement reporting rules across species.
Land parcels within a CPH will be mapped, providing the Welsh Government and the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) with an improved record of a holding.
Complex rules, such as Sole Occupancy Authorities and Cattle Tracing System links (CTSlinks) will be removed, and a 10 mile distance rule will be introduced for all species.
This will allow livestock keepers the opportunity to control all land parcels in their management within 10 miles under one CPH reference.
The Cabinet Secretary said:
“Following a consultation earlier this year I am pleased to announce the launch of this new system. The changes have been developed in conjunction with the industry and will help disease prevention and outbreak control measures, benefiting keepers and the livestock industry as a whole. They are designed to simplify the current system and establish consistent rules across species in line with the objectives of the Strategic Framework for Agriculture.”
The changes will be rolled out gradually over a 2 year period. Until keepers are contacted by Rural Payment Wales (RPW), the current reporting rules remain unchanged, so they do not need to do anything other than to familiarise themselves with the planned changes.
The removal of CTSlinks is a priority so from today the British Cattle Movement Service will no longer permit new applications for CTSlinks.