Help us help you in an emergency – update your PIC

Dr Jeff Cave, Senior Veterinary Officer
Agriculture Victoria – Grampians Ag News

Every year, in some regions of Victoria, there are emergency events involving livestock, such as bushfires, floods, and emergency animal diseases.

Agriculture Victoria plays a key role in the response and recovery during and after these events.
When such an event occurs, some of our first questions include – who is impacted, and how many and what type of livestock do they have?

Victoria’s Property Identification Code (PIC) database is designed to answer these questions at the virtual click of a button. For an accurate estimate, the database needs to be factual and complete.

But, what happens if we find gaps or errors in the database?

In other words, if a PIC’s owner or manager has changed? Or if a piece of land doesn’t have a PIC? Or if a property is mapped incompletely or incorrectly?

It can become necessary to redirect staff from the emergency response to sort these matters out through a combination of phone calls, pursuing council information, and on-the-ground assessments and this can have a negative impact on the timeliness and effectiveness of our response.

The obvious solution is to ensure the PIC database is accurate at a time outside of an emergency response. This is very much a shared responsibility.

There is no cost to apply for or receive a PIC.

A single PIC can be allocated to a property consisting of more than one block of land, provided the blocks are part of one enterprise and are within the same locality or in adjacent localities.

This includes land on which livestock are agisted and leased land.

Individuals must have a PIC for the properties on which they graze cattle, sheep, horses, goats, pigs, alpaca, llamas, deer, camels, and more than 50 poultry.

To apply for a PIC, you have three options:
1. apply for a PIC online by visiting www.agriculture.vic.gov.au/pic
2. download an application form
3. contact the Agriculture Victoria NLIS Helpline on 1800 678 779.
You can also update your existing PIC details using any of these three options.
The online option is a user-friendly way of updating your PIC.

For further information please contact your nearest Agriculture Victoria Veterinary or Animal Health Officer or the Agriculture Victoria NLIS Helpline on 1800 678 779.

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