Mercury, Automated System (FGIS)

Mercury is an automated system (federal state information system, FSIS), designed for electronic certification of goods supervised by state supervision, tracking the path of their movement through the territory of the Russian Federation to create a unified veterinary information environment, improve biological and food safety.

Goals of creation:

• Reduction of time for veterinary supporting documentation execution due to automation of this process.
• Automatic accounting of the received and decreased volume of products at the enterprise (refrigerator, warehouse, MPP, etc.).
• Entry and storage of information on selected samples for the study of imported products.
• The ability to track the movement of a batch of cargo through the territory of the Russian Federation, taking into account its crushing.
• Reduction of labor, material and financial costs for the execution of the MPA due to the replacement of protected paper forms of the MPA with electronic versions.
• Minimize human error by providing ready-made forms for entering information and verifying user input.
• Create a single, centralized database for quick access to up-to-date information, reporting, searching, and analyzing information.

2023: Ability to securely connect to Kontur. Mercurius via L3 VPN

Rosselkhoznadzor and SKB Kontur transferred interaction to a secure L3 VPN communication channel. SKB Kontur announced this on March 28, 2023.

Now users Kontur. Mercuria can continuously work during the period of threats (DDoS attacks) on the Mercury GIS. Read more here.

2022

Withdrawal of products of unscrupulous producers of canned fish based on the results of monitoring in the system

Dobroflot Group of Companies, the largest producer of canned fish in Russia, associates a decrease in the production of canned food in Russia for 11 months of 2022 with the identification by the Rosselkhoznadzor and Rospotrebnadzor of cases of substitution of raw materials. Unscrupulous producers are laying cheaper herring in banks instead of expensive saira. The difference in price between these types of fish can be 4-5 times. These Mercury systems (traceability system of products subject to veterinary control) make it possible to see that one of the market participants issued canned saira food, while herring came to production as raw materials. When such cases are identified, information is sent to law enforcement agencies and Rospotrebnadzor, which take measures, including the seizure of such products. This subsequently led to a reduction in production by unscrupulous participants.

Dozens of criminal cases initiated on the tip of artificial intelligence of Rosselkhoznadzor

Due to the use of IT, such as the FSIS VetIS and the analytical modules and neural network built into it , the Rosselkhoznadzor detects a large number of violations in the circulation of livestock products in Russia and transfers the information to law enforcement agencies. As a result of this work, 79 criminal cases were initiated in 3.5 years, the Rosselkhoznadzor said in July 2022. According^[1] were^[2] these, the largest number of criminal cases is in the Central Federal District.

A special role in this activity is played by Mercury, a component of FGIS VetIS, reinforced by artificial intelligence developed with the participation of Sberbank. Mercury was originally created as an information system to support electronic veterinary certification. It records many events related to the production of raw materials and products of animal origin: their receipt or extraction (if we are talking about fishing or hunting), processing, storage, transportation, sale, laboratory studies of products and raw materials, veterinary and sanitary examination, import into Russia and export from the country.

And since 2020, Rosselkhoznadzor and Sberbank have been working to create the Mercury AI subsystem^[3]. AI is able, when analyzing electronic veterinary documents contained in the program, to identify potential violations in the circulation of livestock products. 30 models of artificial intelligence are available to identify violations.

Rosselkhoznadzor uses AI to identify violations in the circulation of livestock products

As of the beginning of 2022, the amount of information accumulated by Mercury is measured in petabytes. During the day, hundreds of thousands of production transactions, hundreds of thousands of inventory acts and about 14 million veterinary certificates are drawn up in it. The department called such a volume "completely unbearable for manual processing."

Among the examples of criminal cases initiated following the analysis of Mercury data, the Rosselkhoznadzor cites a case in the Bryansk region, where the territorial department of the Rosselkhoznadzor achieved the prosecution of 6 persons who, by prior conspiracy, supplied falsified dairy products to budgetary institutions of the region (part 2, 3, 4 of article 159 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation).

In the Voronezh region, for example, a veterinarian of the Povorinsky district station for combating animal diseases (part 1 of article 292 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation) became a defendant in a criminal case on committing official forgery. At the request of his friend, for 9 months he drew up veterinary accompanying documents for beef of unknown origin, making deliberately false information about the conduct of a clinical pre-slaughter examination of cattle. In the same way, the veterinarian helped to simplify the procedure for selling meat to two more local residents. With this approach, potentially dangerous products could get into circulation.

And in the Orenburg region only from the beginning of 2022, due to the analysis of data in Mercury, law enforcement agencies opened four criminal cases on the facts of the supply of falsified dairy products to socially significant institutions in the region within the framework of concluded state contracts, the Rosselkhoznadzor reports. In particular, falsified butter was supplied to a social rehabilitation center for minors, a boarding house for the elderly and disabled and to two health institutions in the region.

At the end of June 2022, the Rosselkhoznadzor cited data that in just one month of AI operation - from May 23 to June 23 - the system helped identify more than 18 thousand tons of cheese products with suspected counterfeit/falsification and, similarly, about 15.8 thousand tons of oil and almost 2 thousand tons of beef^[4].

2019: Module for setting up interaction with the accounting systems of manufacturers of finished dairy products

On September 17, 2019, Korus Consulting Group of Companies announced the release of a solution for integrating accounting systems for manufacturers of finished dairy products with state systems for veterinary certification "Mercury" and marking and tracing of goods "Honest Sign." Read more here.

2017: Postponement of veterinary certification

Rosselkhoznadzor announced in September 2017 to postpone the date of transition to mandatory electronic veterinary certification. The transition will take place not on January 1, 2018, as provided for by the 243-FZ of 13.07.2015, but six months later, 01.07.2018.

The decision was dictated by the incomplete readiness of the business for the large-scale execution of veterinary accompanying documents (VSD) in electronic form. The introduction of interaction systems with FGIS Mercury, specially created for the formation of electronic VSD, requires a lot of internal preparatory work of each participant in the turnover of controlled goods, from changing the usual business processes to upgrading accounting systems. In particular, it is necessary to shift the logic of the company's internal business processes to the processes of FGIS Mercury, solve the issues of automation of the creation of documents for processing and veterinary certificates, as well as adjust the traceability of the formation and movement of products in the context of batches.

2016

Mercury integrates with Evolution 3.0

On December 12, 2016, it became known that Rosselkhoznadzor and E-COM signed an agreement as part of the implementation of a veterinary certification system in electronic form.

The organizations plan to integrate FGIS Mercury with E-COM's SaaS Evolution 3.0 platform. As a result of the project, all business entities using the services of the EDI provider E-COM will receive a convenient mechanism for automatically issuing electronic veterinary certificates for controlled products in the circulation of which they participate.

This is an unambiguously timely decision, since from January 1, 2018, the registration of electronic VPAs at the Mercury FSIS will become mandatory. At the same time, the transition to electronic veterinary certification involves the exchange of large amounts of information on deliveries, which will entail a request for automation of the data entry procedure and their updating. Thus, the integration of the two systems is another step towards creating a transparent market that will simplify the procedure for interaction of legal entities with regulatory authorities and increase the safety of food products. The parties still have a large amount of joint work, but already now all business entities are advised to take this potential opportunity into account in their plans and activities for electronic data exchange. Rashid Mukharlyamov, head of the company's OpenCertificate permit exchange service E-COM

Composition of FGIS Mercury

According to the information as of December 2016, FGIS Mercury is focused on the use of employees:

• business entities (CS);
• veterinary departments of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation (TR);
• animal disease control stations (BBC);
• the central office of the Rosselkhoznadzor (CA);
• territorial departments of Rosselkhoznadzor (TU);
• temporary storage warehouses,
• customs control areas (CTCs).

The following subsystems operate as part of the Mercury FSIS:

• Subsystem of Temporary Storage Warehouse (MercurianCFS)
• Subsystem of the State Veterinary Expertise (Mercuri.GWE)
• Subsystem of the Business Entity (Mercuri.ks)
• Subsystem of Territorial Administration (Mercuri.TU)
• Notification Subsystem (Mercury Notifications)
• MPA Issued Authentication Subsystem
• Universal Gateway (Vetis.API)
• Foreign Advance Notification Subsystem (Mercury.Notice)

The Mercury system is in the form of a web application, i.e. users interact with the system via the Internet. All users always have access to up-to-date information. Work is carried out through a web browser.

Mercury is located on a central server connected to the Internet. Since the central server may not be available (for example, if it is disconnected from the Internet or there is no power supply), there is a geographically remote backup server that automatically replicates information with the central server and, if it is disconnected, processes user requests until the main server is restored.

Diagram of the user's work with the system, (2016)

Notes

The creators recommend using Google Chrome or Mozilla Firefox 3.0 or higher to work with Mercury. Supported in Internet Explorer version 7.0 and higher, it is part of Windows.