Seres – Could you tell us something about Normabev?
T. Vuaille - Normabev is a private non-profit technical organisation, which emerged in 2003 out of an agreement between businesses within Interbev, the cattle and meat industry organisation. It obtained technical responsibility for the classification and marking of adult cattle in the slaughterhouse and is responsible for verifying the weighing and presentation of the carcass. Interbev’s aim is consequently to encourage the establishment of commercial relations between livestock farmers and slaughterhouses based on an impartial and consistent system of classification and marking enabling work to be carried out in a climate of complete trust. Normabev monitors the slaughter of 3.3 million cattle annually in 245 French abattoirs, with a team of 21 people.

Seres - What does beef traceability mean?
T. Vuaille -Traceability is a series of records to track the meat from birth to the consumer. “From farm to fork”, in a nutshell. Cattle are identified, and then tracked by means of a livestock register, passports and notices recording all movements in a database until slaughter. Traceability to the consumer is then achieved by labelling.

Seres - How and why did your paperless records project arise?
T. Vuaille – In the first instance it met the need for Normabev to record and monitor all carcass classification operations for cattle slaughtered in France, where they are carried out by the 500 inspectors in post in abattoirs or by machines. The principle was approved by the professionals running Normabev, representing livestock farmers, slaughtermen, butchers and cattle traders, with the purpose of organising the circulation of slaughter information.

Seres – How was the implementation organised?
T. Vuaille –After selecting Seres in 2005, system development was carried out, along with the first connection tests with abattoirs and other partners. This testing phase continued into 2006, and was then succeeded by the first live implementations. In 2007, all abattoirs, regardless of their computer system, were connected to Normabev after a data integrity audit. The system then became fully operational.

As a result, since 2007, all abattoirs have been reporting using a single protocol, and Seres looks after converting this data from their information systems into a single format so that it can be added into the Normabev database, hosted by Seres.

Statistics have been developed for Normabev and its partners. Normabev and Seres staff worked in perfect coordination, Normabev technical staff were much involved with the slaughterhouses and the Seres hotline was also very useful.

Seres – What results have you seen?
T. Vuaille - Normabev monitors the weighting and classification results for all cattle in France, by means of 40 data items per animal. The day after slaughter, or two days at the latest, weight and classification information on their animals is made available to all livestock farmers and wholesalers (80,000 to 100,000 animals slaughtered per week).

The system put in place also enables the abattoir to check the animal's identity. Normabev has become the focal point for cattle slaughter data for the French Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries (national identification database), and runs the focal point for cattle movements on behalf of Interbev, also with Seres (13 million movements annually). This mechanism enabled the national identification database in 2008 to improve its consistency checks between the information it receives from the various databases, and to simplify administrative procedures, in particular those relating to the slaughter premium.

Normabev, which also ensures that the data is used in a confidential manner, will now transmit this data, in accordance with the conditions laid down by its board, to the French Institute for Livestock and to the French agronomic research organisation INRA, with the joint aim of indexing breeding stock and producing statistics of general interest.

Seres - Why did you choose Seres for your project?
T. Vuaille - Seres was selected after a competitive tender from a dozen IT services companies. All the criteria were a factor in this selection, but the soundness of the company, the thoroughness of the staff, the robust nature of the technology and resources proposed, and experience in developing and monitoring systems for large customers with an element of security for important data, were decisive.