AIM system ‘open to abuse’ by meat factories

Damian McCarney

Alleged shortfalls in the system which guarantees beef traceability has left it vulnerable to possible misuse by meat factories around the country, an industry insider has told The Anglo-Celt.
The Animal Identification and Movement (AIM) system enables the authorities to trace cattle at all times, and secures Ireland’s position at the forefront of beef production.
According to a source, who spoke to The Celt on the basis of anonymity, while factories can legitimately use the AIM system to record the transfer of a particular animal from the farmer to the factory, they are not permitted to access details on the farmer’s herd that are not for sale.
The source, employed by the Department of Agriculture, indicated that gaining this commercially sensitive information on farmers’ herds could be quite easily achieved.
From around 1998 a numeric system was applied where each head of cattle was allocated a 12-digit cattle number, which runs in sequence according to the farmer’s stock. Therefore, if a farmer is selling an animal whose 12-digit number ends in 225, to gain information on his other cattle, someone with access to AIMS can simply search for data relating to the cattle numbered 226, 227, 228 and so on.
“You wouldn’t need to be an IT specialist,” he said.
“It will show the date of birth and it will show the current owner,” said the source, “they are the two vital pieces of information they need.”
However, he confirmed to The Celt that he had never personally witnessed a member of staff from any factory access any unauthorised material from AIM.

Access
According to the source, up to 2005 only the the technical agricultural officer had access to the system - it was “heavily regulated by Department staff”. However, a decision among the senior ranks of the Department of Agriculture brought in what the source describes as “light touch regulation”, permitting the factory’s involvement in processing the animals’ numbers going through the Department’s database.
He insists that technical agricultural officers have tried to flag this issue with the Department.
He says that it would only be worthwhile for a factory - intent on exploiting the information - to access information relating to beef farmers operating on a large scale, with say 20-50 bulls.
He likened any potential unauthorised access to the AIM system to “a member of the general public accessing Pulse” - referring to the internal garda database.
In response to the allegations of system shortfalls, the Department replied that any suggestion of abuse of the AIM system should be brought to their attention:
“Herd-level data stored on the AIM system in respect of an individual farmer can only be accessed by a third party where the farmer has provided a written authorisation to the Department granting access to that third party.
“In all other cases, the individual keeper, who has signed up to use AgFood.ie or an approved farm management package, can access her/his own herd profile from the AIM system via the use of a unique secure password.
“Information held by the Department on the Animal Identification and Movement (AIM) system is confidential and is maintained for the purposes only for which it was provided in accordance with the provisions of legislation on Data Protection.”
The source’s allegations about the shortcomings of the system, echoes concerns raised with the IFA by farmers. National chairman of the livestock committee, Harry Burns, has passed the farmers’ concerns on to Agriculture Minister, Simon Coveney.

Suspicions
“If you go to a livestock mart, your animal is scanned in and the mart knows nothing of the rest of your herd other than that animal is okay for sale - that’s the way I understand the system and we believe that’s the way it should be in meat factories as well.
“In fairness, they [factories] do need to know who owns the cow that’s being presented into them for sale... that’s obvious for traceability, that’s the law. But knowing the ages of all your other animals on the farm, their status, and the number of animals you have on your farm at a particular time - there’s no necessity for them to know that, and it could be used in a manipulative way against a farmer, and [if it were to occur] it is certainly, in my view, a breach of a farmer’s private data.”
Mr Burns said he has raised the farmers’ suspicions that factories had access to private information with the Minister for Agriculture, and urged him to investigate the matter. Mr Burns said that the Minister agreed to look into the matter, but he had not heard back from the minister since his meeting last week.