A TRUCE has been declared for beef producers who have not handed in passports from animals which have died.

The English Beef and Lamb Executive has urged producers to send those passports to the British Cattle Movement Service so they can be eliminated before the crucial EU Food and Veterinary Office inspection in June.

"BCMS has said action will not be taken against farmers just because the passports were returned more than seven days after the death of the animals," said Duncan Sinclair, MLC beef economics manager.

Cattle Tracing System rules demand the return to BCMS within seven days of the passports of all animals under 24 months which die on-farm. The passports of those dying at more than 24 months must be sent with the stock when they are disposed of through the designated BSE-testing channels.

However, assessments of the number of stock born before August 1996 and remaining on farm for OTM exit planning reveal a number of missing passports from dead animals. Mr Sinclair said the BCMS wanted to draw a line under the past so the errors could be eliminated once and for all.

Overall, the number of movement anomalies in the system has been cut from 1.2m in the spring of 2003 to just 400,000 at the start of this year. Incomplete movements fell from 600,000 to 50,000 in the same period.

"Encouragingly too, data errors in registration have been halved over the past two years," said Mr Sinclair.

That coincides with a near-doubling of the percentage of registrations made electronically through CTS on-line - up from 20pc in early 2003 to 38pc today.

"This underlines both the value of electronic registration in eliminating errors at source and the extent to which producers are finding it an easy and convenient way of applying for passports," said Mr Sinclair.

Even so, BCMS records still show about 2,000 animals a month are denied full passports through late applications, thus excluding them from entering the human food chain.

"This continues to represent a serious loss both to individual producers and to the beef industry as a whole and emphasises the need to register all births well within the 27-day deadline," said Mr Sinclair.