British Cattle Movement Service

The British Cattle Movement Service (BCMS) is the organisation responsible for maintaining a database of all bovine animals in the United Kingdom, except for Northern Ireland, which has a separate database maintained by the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development. It was established in the wake of the mad cow disease crisis in the UK, and is part of the Rural Payments Agency. Other member states of the European Union have similar cattle tracing systems.

Every bovine animal in the United Kingdom (as elsewhere in the European Union) has a unique number, shown both on an ear tag in each ear and on a paper cattle passport which is held by the current keeper of the animal. The system covers cattle and also other bovine animals such as water buffalo, yak, bison and hybrids. The number and passport remain with the animal throughout its life, and are recorded by the slaughterhouse at its death, allowing traceability of the beef. The BCMS central database is called the Cattle Tracing System, and works alongside the physical passport to record the births, deaths and movements of all cattle.

The Cattle Tracing System (CTS) is the database for all cattle in Great Britain (Northern Ireland has a separate tracing system), to which farmers must notify births, movements and deaths of cattle on their holding. The system was introduced on 28 September 1998 in order to meet EU legislation requiring all member states to have a computerised tracing system by the end of 1999. There are currently four ways to notify CTS about births/movements/deaths including via the postal service using movement cards (cheque-book style passports only) and passport applications, over the telephone using the CTS Self-Service Line, over the internet using the CTS Online service or through third party software using CTS Web Services.

The cattle passport has taken three forms.

Each format change only affected new issues of passports, leaving the old passports in circulation and retaining former reporting methods for them. Replacement passports (for example in the case of loss or amendment) are in the format which is current at the time of re-issue.

When an animal dies, the date of death is entered in the passport and this is returned to BCMS. The death may be notified electronically in addition.

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