ICAR Technical Series No 5 A review was presented on the objectives, scope and current size of the field recording business of ICAR member organizations. In the second part of the paper the on-going trends in animal recording including recording for farm management purposes, quality assurance and breeding purposes are discussed. In the final section, an outlook is given into future recording systems with special reference to ICAR. This includes the scope of farm management aid and the recording of milk and meat producing animals for breeding purposes. Finally, the emerging structures of future farm animal recording organizations is discussed.