ALB of Whitehall environment department reveals that it seconded £5m of personnel to its parent in FY25 to help delivery of nationwide system also covering cattle, pigs, deer and goats

The 2025 fiscal year brought millions of pounds’ worth of progress on the delivery of plans to use digital and data to transform government’s ability to trace livestock across various common species.

In its recently published annual accounts and report for the 12 months to 31 March, the Rural Payments Agency (RPA) reveals that, during the year, it played a key role in supporting the transformation plans of its parent organisation: the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. 

Over the course of FY25, Defra paid the RPA £5.1m to support the secondment of staff to the department’s specialist sheep unit, as well as its wider Livestock Information Transformation Programme (LITP) – which will ultimately implement a single, unified system to monitor farm animals.

“During 2024-25, the agency continued to assist Defra in maintaining sheep and goat records as part of the Defra Sheep Bureau team,” the RPA’s annual report says. “In addition, throughout 2024-25, agency staff were again loaned to Defra to assist on the LITP. A new multi-species livestock identification and tracking service that will improve digital traceability in England, initially for sheep, cattle, pigs, goats, and deer.”

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To support delivery of LITP, specialist dedicated tech company Livestock Information – which is owned 85% by Defra and 15% by statutory non-departmental public body the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board – was set up in 2019.

Operational implementation of the new Livestock Information Service – initially covering sheep – began in 2022.

According to the government-owned company’s website: “Development is now well underway to launch the new LIS cattle service in summer 2026, which will replace the Cattle Traceability Service for English cattle notifications. Pig movement data will then follow suite, to replace the current eAML2 service. Combining multiple livestock species onto one traceability system will create a single, digital movement service for all species that is simple and convenient for livestock record management in England.”

Livestock Information also indicated that it is engaging with public bodies in the other three countries of the UK with the aim of developing “compatible and seamless services for livestock movements across UK borders”.

LITP will ultimately deliver “the transformation of livestock traceability in England and [will] improve the resilience of the industry against the impact of disease”, the company’s website adds.