"People will not register animals until the keeping of the cow affects the subsidy" - the head of the USBA Iryna Palamar

In the USA, another census of cattle was conducted. It turned out that in some districts there are more cows, than people. This is reported by AgroDay with reference to The Seattle Times.

For example, Garfield, with a population of 2,200, there are farms with more than 8,000 bulls that are fattened. It leads the list in terms of the number of cattle per capita.

It is noted that the census of cattle and other domestic animals in the USA is held every 5 years. This helps the government to determine the federal funding of programs targeting rural areas, to provide information to enterprises that want to sell products in the agricultural sector, to give an idea of ​​the development of irrigation practices and the prevalence of organic farming.

"It would be good if we followed the United States’ example" Iryna Palamar, head of the Ukrainian Stock Breeders Association said. - Without a clear statistics on the number of animals in Ukraine, there will be no effective planning of the Government's activities in the direction of the industry development, as well as the establishment of export opportunities. Moreover, the maintenance of statistical data, in turn, requires mandatory identification of animals in enterprises and households. Unfortunately, the Law on Identification and Registration of Animals, adopted back in 2009, is not properly implemented. People do not want to register cows, because they are afraid to show the state their income and lose the subsidy. Therefore, in order to resolve the problem it is necessary to amend Part 2, Clause 8 of the Decree of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine No. 848 of October 21, 1995 "On simplification of the procedure for granting subsidies to the population for reimbursement of expenses for housing and communal services, purchase of liquefied gas, solid and liquid stove household fuel", namely - to exclude "the income of personal peasant farms" from the aggregate income of individuals, as well as co-operative payments, if peasants join cooperatives. Our Ukrainian Stock Breeders Association has repeatedly raised this issue. In particular, back in December 2016, we appealed to the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine and the Ministry of Social Policy of Ukraine with the issue of introducing appropriate changes in the legislation.

Another problem is the imperfection of the legislation on animal identification. Identification procedures are labor-intensive, have a large number of references to paper carriers and specialized forms. Therefore, first of all, it is necessary to improve the legislation on identification and to simplify the procedures as much as possible, which should be paid by the state.

Without establishing the mechanism for compulsory registration of animals, we cannot export animals to European countries, since this is a necessary condition for the EU.

The animal identification procedure will also help to control the movement, slaughter and sale of animals, which in turn will improve the epizootic situation in Ukraine. Producers will also benefit from this: after all, there is no possibility now to receive subsidies from the state, for example, to fatten the bulls on unregistered animals".