Dragan Angelovski, Chief Technical Advisor at FAO Georgia. Photo: FAO/Rusudan Panozishvili

The National Animal Identification and Traceability System of Georgia (NAITS) is a comprehensive electronic platform of the National Food Agency that is used to record, store and analyse information on mandatorily identifiable animals, their keepers, related aspects of animal health and food safety, and locations where animals reside all around Georgia. The NAITS also includes information on various types of farms such as Aquaculture and Beekeeping and membership in farmer organizations. The NAITS consists of more than 25 modules and brings together hundreds of system users, information about more than 2 million bovines, sheep, stray dogs and other domestic animals. The NAITS is implemented by the National Food Agency with technical assistance from FAO, and financial assistance of the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) and Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC). The second phase of the NAITS development aims to extend the sharing of information, secure the sustainability of the system and ensure the long-term impact on public health, animal health, food safety and access to international markets.

However, the years of work and recording the information throughout the Country has created opportunities in addition to the initial goals. The NAITS has also become a trusted, valuable and significant source for the data for external organizations working with and supporting the livestock sector in the form of various statistics with geographical, temporal and gender related indicators. To find out what kind of data can be made available, we speak with Dragan Angelovski, the Chief Technical Advisor at FAO Georgia.

Besides the registration system that The National Animal Identification and Traceability System of Georgia (NAITS) has implemented, after years of work and recording the information, the project has stored a significant amount of data throughout the country. Could you tell us more, about what NAITS offers in terms of interesting information and statistics to the wider public, or the interested organizations?  

We can say that NAITS records the comprehensive history of the lifecycle of domestic animals throughout Georgia. The system allows full traceability describing where the animals are located and who is responsible for them. The system also records parental links of the animals and also the data related to epidemiology and food safety. The system stores the current and historic information of who were keepers of the animals and when they changed. Also, it records information on movements: for instance, when they were sent to pastures, or if they were sold at the markets, and finally when and where they moved to a slaughterhouse.

If the information is entered in line with the legislations for a certain animal with established disease, through the system, we can find where the animal moved and with which animals came in to contact, which we can visualize on a geographical map of the animal movement.

To give some examples and context, for instance, with a click of a button we can see that in March 2023 the system counts 264,677 holdings in the country, among them are 278 aquaculture farms, 260,124 are subsistence farms, 121 slaughterhouses, etc. We can also with a click open a report and see that between January and March 2023, 40,410 animals were registered in abattoirs. We can also see further details, such as the total of 2,641 animals were registered in Tetritskaro, including sheep, cows and buffalos, and 19 – in Mestia  etc.

The system records the activities of the National Food Agency (NFA), for example, whether an animal was vaccinated, or if samples were taken and submitted to a lab. Basically the system provides a comprehensive trace back of number of functionalities which can be used to assess the performance of various stakeholders.  

The NAITS also links farmers with their representative organizations (farmer associations and cooperatives), including the possibility to transfer the mandate for management of the information, allowing an easy overview of the membership, as well as number of animals serviced by the framework organization.

The NAITS is also basis on which NFA can issue various certificates directly from the system or using the data, to confirm the scope of involvement in the livestock sector.

I would say that, in principle the system might have answers to the questions of NGOs and projects which deal with livestock, so they would better understand the situation to be able to improve their planning, activities, programing, monitoring and evaluation, etc., as there is almost no end to the added value an organization can get from the data if they are interested.

So, for example if I’m interested in what actions or manipulations have National Food Agency completed in relation with the farmers, can I find this information in the system according to the locations, timeframes, etc.?   

For external users the system produces statistical reports. They can provide statistics per campaign, or, per status, for instance, how many animals have died in some area, or how many animals changed locations in the given time. The system can provide all interested organizations with these statistics. If their needs have been identified and included in the statistical reports, the information can be available with a click of a button.

For example the Agency for Land Management is interested in the information about ownership of sheep, in order to lease pastures directly to sheep breeders in line with the number of animals they own. The system can also record how many sheep have been moving to those pastures too. If the reporting requirements are agreed the NAITS can trace the movement and provide tailored statistical reports, and even send notifications.

However, there is some type of personal information which is not accessible for all users. For example, the external person would not be able to access the personal information about a particular keeper and holding.

Have any organizations reached out to NAITS and already inquired the information?

Last year we had an example, when the FAO-GEF project which is implemented under the operational partnership with REC Caucasus, needed information about the number of female beneficiaries involved in the target municipalities. The project indicator targets require that a certain share of beneficiaries are women, however it was not possible from the national statistics to extract on the gender of livestock keepers and also most of the trainings were attended by men. This did not change the fact that women are responsible for the animals. Therefore, in order to see the number of women who would benefit from the project we needed to assess the number of women who would use the pastures. As in principle the system registers the gender of the keeper – the person who is responsible for the animals, we checked who were the keepers of the animals in the villages with targeted pasture restoration and on bases of this information we generated the number of women involved in the livestock. Interestingly, we got quite mixed results. In certain regions of Georgia ownership of the animals by women is quite high, but in other communities it tends to be quite low. For example, in Sno (Kazbegi municipality) women consisted 41% of the holding keepers, while in Melaani (Kakheti) they were only 14% and in Naniani – 10%.

I imagine that one using those statistics could analyse it further and get important lessons about ownership and responsibility towards animals from the women perspective. Which can be addressed from different approaches.

If I represent an NGO or other type of organization, how do I reach you and how soon do I get the information?

First of all, we are planning to send request to various donor organizations and projects to assess their exact needs in terms of data. On basis of this communication we will develop a reporting tool that will be available online and interested parties will be able to generate their own statistics. For instance, if we see the demand from organizations for some certain indicators we can make them available online per period and per location.

There is another way of course, while the project is ongoing, NGOs, the donor organizations or anyone interested can submit request to the NFA, who can generate the statistics from system unless they have already been included into the overall reporting tool that we are planning to develop. The project can also independently provide some data unless it involves the personal information.