Scotland’s experts on farmer co-ops and food industry collaboration, we work with food and farming businesses to make them more profitable, competitive, and sustainable - #workingtogether to shape the future, today.
All our work helps facilitate farmers and food and drink businesses to work together effectively. Over the years we've expanded and developed subsidiary businesses - getting the right people together and making innovative advancements - to help benefit food, farming and rural Scotland.
Developing staff capability is one of the most effective ways to improve a co-op’s performance. Check out our events and training programme - most of which are open to non co-op members too.
As a development organisation, owned by our members, we provide a range of specialist services not available elsewhere, to assist them in developing their people and their businesses. Get in touch to find out how we can help you.
See below for all the latest news, views and updates from us here at SAOS. Find all our latest videos on YouTube at: SAOS - working together in food and farming
ScotEID was initially set up as a research and development project in 2008 by SAOS, working in partnership with the Animal Health and Welfare Division of Scottish Government and an industry working group, to find practical ways to deal with a new EU regulation for sheep movement and flock registers.
Previous slow and inaccurate, paper-based systems meant that the Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak in 2001 had a catastrophic effect on the UK livestock industry and a more effective system was needed to improve traceability to manage any serious disease outbreaks in the future.
Since 2008, ScotEID has been developed and refined to create a fully-functional, all species data system, for the registration of all livestock births, deaths and movements within Scotland.
The ScotEID database uses co-operative data at an individual level, allowing real-time tracking of livestock, all the way through the supply chain, to the point of entry to the food chain. This ‘holy grail’ for farmers, abattoirs, governments, health officials, and consumers, has been achieved by ScotEID, working with the industry, to provide accurate identification and movement data, with continuous analysis of that data.
Read more about ScotEID here
For more information on cattle EID or to register with ScotEID call 01466 794323 or email
help@scoteid.com
Want to find out more about how ScotEID works? Read our FAQs.
ScotEID is the livestock traceability system for Scotland recording Sheep, Pig and Cattle movements and tracing within Scotland. ScotEID is currently being extended to register the births and deaths of cattle replacing CTS/BCMS. ScotEID supports the Bovine Viral Diarrhoea (BVD) Eradication Scheme, the Scotch Potential Eligibility Cattle Checker (SPECC) for QMS, and data recording for the Beef Efficiency Scheme.
ScotEID was set up to deal with the introduction of the EU regulation 21/2004 mandating the requirement for Sheep to be EID tagged. The ScotEID pilot started in 2007 to develop a workable solution to support farmers, markets and abattoirs deal with the technology challenges as a result of the regulation. In 2010, the ScotEID website became available to all farmers and the ScotEID Information Centre and helpline opened.
Sheep
ScotEID provides a platform for sheep farmers to easily retrieve their sheep tag reads when sheep pass through Scottish Marts and Abattoirs, known as CCP’s (Critical Control Point), to maintain their flock register. Each CCP has a tag reader that reads sheep EID tags as they move through the reader and this feeds directly into ScotEID. ScotEID monitor and are in constant touch with all CCP’s to ensure the data is as accurate and up to date as possible. This provides sheep keepers with details to meet their cross-compliance requirements as well as providing traceability for the livestock industry in the event of a disease outbreak.
Pigs
Pig movements in Scotland moved from a paper system to an online pre-notification electronic system on ScotEID when the Pigs (Records, Identification and Movement) (Scotland) Order 2011 was introduced. ScotEID provides a simple means to batch record, pre-notify and confirm all pig movements within Scotland.
BVD
The BVD eradication scheme is an industry-led scheme, which was introduced to help farmers eradicate the disease and reduce costs associated with having BVD in their herd. ScotEID deals with all calls to the Scottish Governments BVD helpline has the BVD look-up function and provides guidance regarding BVD testing. Farmers, vets and marts have access to each animals BVD status and BVD testing data, that is uploaded to ScotEID daily by all approved testing laboratories.
ScotMoves
In 2017, ScotMoves was introduced to replace the old ‘linked holding’ system. It enables Scottish cattle keepers to record within business moves, such as seasonal grazing, without having to report these movements to the Cattle Tracing System (CTS). The system is beneficial to both cattle keepers
and government in terms of disease control such as BVD eradication, and public health.
ScotEID is a ‘real-time’, livestock traceability system that provides Government, vets and industry with the tools to manage future disease outbreaks quickly and efficiently. It is a system that is easily accessible and up to date information in line with Scottish Government legislation.
SAOS set up ScotEID working in partnership with the Animal Health and Welfare Division of Scottish Government and the Scottish Livestock industry. Scottish Government continues to support the research and development that ScotEID provides, for example, the Cattle EID Pilot is now in the trial stage with the industry using cattle EID tags on a voluntary basis to test the systems before Bovine EID become mandatory, expected mid-2021. For more information on Cattle EID, please see the FAQ attached here (link to Cattle EID FAQ’s).
The website can be found at www.scoteid.com. ScotEID has its own Help Team who are happy to provide information and guidance to all users. ScotEID can be contacted by calling 01466 794323 or emailing help@scoteid.com, the office is open Monday to Friday, 9am – 5pm.