Rekenregels rundvee voor de Landbouwtelling : verantwoording van het gebruik van het Identificatie & Registratiesysteem

Information on cattle farming in the Netherlands is needed for the national statistics on beef and dairy farmsand farm structure. To obtain this information the national government asks farmers to submit informationon the number of cattle on their farms, divided into the various animal classes, as part of the annualagricultural census. The government also wants to minimise the administrative burden on farmers. At therequest of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, Wageningen Environmental Research has studied to what extentit would possible to derive the required information from the existing identification and registration system(I&R) for beef and dairy farms (a system for identifying and registering livestock for animal and humanhealth purposes). The results show that this is largely possible: for most farms all the animal classes can beautomatically derived from the I&R. For some farms it is necessary to make an additional division of animalclasses by product category. This new way of working will not only reduce the administrative burden, but itwill also lead to better quality data on beef and dairy cattle.