Kleine Zeitung / Competition from the internet at the cattle market

It advertises better animal welfare, economic efficiency for farms and a better overview of current market prices: the new "Viehworld" app is on the lips of all domestic cattle farmers and is conquering one EU country after another. Cattle can be advertised directly on the internet by means of a photo and thus sold and bought. More and more farmers are registering on the platform.

That's how it's been going so far: The most beautiful cows are allowed onto a "catwalk" of a large auction hall, such as the one in Greinbach. The animals are transported there, then showered and cleaned before they go onto the sawdust stage. Then the cattle are auctioned off and transported to the new farm. As a rule, this takes three days.

With the idea of trading cattle via mobile phone app, Wolfgang Schiessl, a veterinarian in Lower Austria, not only wanted to make work easier for local farmers, but also to save the animals transport routes and reduce the possibility of infection. "As we have seen with Corona, an accumulation of many individuals in one place coming from different localities - or in our case farms - is not really beneficial," says the resourceful veterinarian.