Producers are confused over the NSW government's decision to engage a behavioural science company to investigate the 'weakness' in the traceability system for property-to-property movements (P2P) but not focus on sheep and goat electronic identification (eID) tags.
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The NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI) has engaged the company Evidn as part of a social research project into traceability and the 'failures' to comply with P2P movements.
The total cost of the project is $116,000.
While a NSW DPI spokesperson says the project is not part of the implementation of eID, producers say the tag roll-out should be front and centre of any project related to traceability.
Pastoralists' Association of West Darling president Terry Smith said traceability and eID went hand-in-hand with each other.
"The crunch point is uploading data, which is where we are having trouble with the traceability process. If that doesn't cover eID then what would be the point of it (project)?" Mr Smith said.
Mr Smith said if the aim of the project was not to focus on eID then it did not make sense.
"That's a lot of money going out the window," he said.
Even though the government spokesperson said the project was not related to eID, Mr Smith said it was still covered in discussions with the company.
Related reading: Sheep eID has left producers asking more questions
A NSW DPI spokesperson said P2P movements had been found to be a weakness in the traceability system, which emerged after monitoring and feedback from the NLIS Advisory Committee.
The spokesperon said the the project's aim was to independently and objectively gather evidence on current practices and identify where improvements could be implemented.
"DPI does not have in-house specialists in social research. Evidn has significant experience delivering behaviour change in fields including agriculture, both in Australia and internationally," the spokesperson said.
Evidn chief behavioural scientist, John Pickering, whose team has been speaking to producers in the Central West around Cowra and Forbes, as well as Broken Hill, said their work was to understand the perspective of producers and other key parties towards P2P transfers and traceability requirements, including entry into the NLIS database.
"Traceability practices are ultimately behaviours landholders adopt, hence why behavioural science has relevance to the issue," Mr Pickering said.
"We draw on the producers' perspectives, alongside any available scientific evidence, to offer recommendations to DPI about how to improve the traceability process as it relates to P2P movements.
"The project stems from a biosecurity backdrop - primarily looking at how we can improve P2P traceability practices with biosecurity benefits in mind."
Mr Pickering said much of their work focused on understanding the barriers and benefits that producers might experience when recording livestock P2P movements into the NLIS.
"While our focus is on P2P movements, the issue of traceability is quite broad and implicates a number of parallel components which are relevant, but outside of our scope (eg. the ongoing roll-out of the eID program, changes to the NLIS database)," he said.
"Nevertheless it is of interest to us to see how, if at all, other related components might be impacting producers' willingness to adopt P2P traceability practices."
The project is expected to be completed by June 23.
