The ICBF has moved to address delays in issuing blue cards for calves in the National Genotyping Programme, implementing two key changes from this week.

Passports will now issue automatically if a sample has been in a lab for 10 days. Passports will also be issued when a sample is found to be unsuitable or empty, pending a retest, the ICBF said.

Amid farmer complaints, the ICBF defended its performance, stating that in the week up to Tuesday the average turnaround time from birth to a passport issuing was 13.1 days.

Some 2% of samples spent longer than seven days in labs, which the ICBF acknowledged is “understandably causing some frustration among farmers”.