Animal identification and performance recording have been traditionally used for animal breeding and herd management. Animal identification and performance recording are regulated by various national and international agreements and standards. Both systems might also serve multiple other purposes in a country’s livestock sector. The good identification and performance recording system is the basis for pedigree and artificial insemination schemes, maintaining the herd book, delivering health certificate, subsidy payment schemes, good farm management, prevention of animal rustling, ensuring fair practices in food trade, and contributes to securing access to markets for higher-quality and geographically identifiable products.

Considering above-mentioned and requests of countries to provide capacity building in performance recording for improvement breeding programmes the FAO Regional Office for Europe and Central Asia and the Estonian Recording Center organized a regional workshop and field trip to dairy farms with different milking systems. The representatives from Albania, Armenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, Russian Federation, Serbia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and Ukraine were invited to the training. The idea of the workshop was to assist participating countries to develop good identification and milk recording systems. The workshop helped participants to understand different possibilities to implement the system and gave an overview of systems used internationally. The participants saw practical examples on the animal identification and milk recording as it was reorganized and is organized now in Estonia, how milk recording information was/is used in Estonia. During the workshop the participants saw how other activities might benefit from the milk recording system.