In February, when the streets of Sachkhere, Georgia are covered with snow and temperatures reach -2 degrees Celsius outside, 39-year-old Shorena Jambazishvili collects her plastic gloves, new syringes, some medicines and a smartphone and makes her way to the farm.
It’s early morning, and it is time for the first round of vaccinations. Shorena, as a veterinary technician, works alongside the veterinarian to vaccinate all the cows in the municipality and then digitalize the information.
In the team of two, she is responsible for inputting all data into Georgia’s online National Animal Identification and Traceability System (NAITS), which has revolutionized the country’s animal traceability scheme in the past five years. Implemented by the Government of Georgia, with the technical assistance of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), NAITS records the data of all livestock that must be registered by law, their keepers and keeping locations.
Tracing animals and animal-origin products in a prompt and timely manner through NAITS is an integral part of the food safety chain. By registering and verifying the origin and health of the animals at every step of the value chain, NAITS ensures the delivery of safe food from farm to table.
Birth, origin, vaccination status, health condition and even colour of the animals are now easily searchable online. The information helps buyers to make informed and healthy choices when selecting meat and other animal-origin products. For example, customers can find QR codes on the product that link to NAITS where they can look up the origin, age and other basic information related to the product they are about to buy.
Currently, NAITS holds information about more than one million bovines, thanks in large part to the veterinarians and technicians who are the pillars of the project, working in the field to collect and record the data.
“When it’s the vaccinating season, you can’t miss the day and dose, so we go to the farms every day early in the mornings and late in the evenings,” says Shorena.
With a syringe in one hand and a smartphone in another, she walks across the queue of a few hundred cows, some of which greet her, mooing, while others clumsily rub their foreheads against the wooden fence to scratch their giant heads.
She chooses the bovine ready for the vaccine and smiles saying, “My family members find it difficult to have me out of the home so often, however… because they are not used to it.’’