Australia - Day 2

The morning started with a brisk walk over the Yarra River and down Melbourne's streets to the Department of the Primary Industries or DPI. While there, we got the opportunity to hear from Tony Britt, Director of Animal Health and Welfare for Victoria. His presentation and discussion was over the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS). A few points that I caught from it included the impressive statistic that 99.5% of the information for the cattle database is submitted electronically. Furthermore, the database for all of the forms and submissions is run by the industry. Switching gears to the swine industry, Australia hopes to phase out sow stalls by 2017.  Finally, we heard from two other representatives from the department and with their NLIS system and computer programming, they are able to achieve traceback within a couple of hours. Personally, I think that this is fascinating. Following lunch, we toured the city of Melbourne seeing the botanical gardens, Captain Cook's cottage, and many historical sites. We concluded the day at Carlton BrewHouse. It was interesting to see the process, and of course, get to taste samples at the end of the day. For dinner on our own, the group found a buffet by the casino across the street. It was unquestionably a busy day!