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Traceability: Trials and tribulations
By John Maday  |  Wednesday, July 07, 2010

Does it seem like we’ve been discussing and debating animal traceability for a long time? Way back in 2002 I had the interesting experience of serving on a planning team, organized by the USDA, to develop a framework for a national animal traceability system. The program was focused entirely on animal health, with a goal of rapid containment of infectious-disease outbreaks in U.S. livestock herds.

The process resulted in the U.S. Animal Identification Plan, or USAIP. The team presented the initial plan to the U.S. Animal Health Association in October 2003, with a timeline that called for individual or group identification of all cattle, swine and small ruminants for interstate movement by July 2005. USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service later adopted many of the standards outlined in USAIP in what became the National Animal Identification System, or NAIS. That schedule, of course, has evolved, as did the program itself.

NAIS faced considerable opposition around the country, some based on legitimate concerns from producers over cost and privacy issues and others based on the fertile imaginations of the most paranoid of conspiracy theorists.

In February of this year, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack essentially killed the old NAIS when he announced the agency would direct its efforts toward a framework for animal disease traceability that would place most of the responsibility on individual states and tribes. USDA currently is conducting a series of public meetings to discuss the plan and take comments from stakeholders. Information on the program is available on the agency’s traceability Web site.    

Whether USDA is on the right track with this new plan remains to be seen, but the truth is we need a coherent national traceability system. First, we need a plan to rapidly contain and minimize the economic and social impact of animal-disease outbreaks. Secondly, such a system could provide the additional benefit of reassuring our trading partners and keeping U.S. meat products competitive in international markets.

In a teleconference with trade media last week, Joel Haggard, who is the U.S. Meat Export Federation’s senior vice president for the Asia Pacific Region, discussed the challenges and opportunities for U.S. beef in the region.   

Market access for U.S. beef in Asian countries, Haggard says, is “all over the map,” with some countries such as South Korea granting nearly full access and some others maintaining significant trade barriers. But while Korea has removed trade barriers, consumer confidence remains a challenge. Consumer confidence has improved in Japan, he says, but trade barriers remain.

China, which remains virtually closed to U.S. beef, offers huge potential if negotiators can reach a trade deal, Haggard says. Access for U.S. beef would immediately make China our number-five export customer with vast potential to grow from there.

But while China remains closed to U.S. beef, the country recently announced an agreement to begin allowing access to Canadian beef.

Canada, Haggard notes, has the same rating of “Controlled BSE risk” from the World Organization for Animal Health as the United States, although Canada has more, and more recent, cases of the disease.

Another key difference though, is that Canada has a national ID and animal traceability system in place. Responding to a question during the news conference, Haggard said the issue of traceability has not in itself been a “deal breaker” in trade negotiations with Asian countries, but it has contributed to our market-access challenges. Given the intricacies of international trade negotiations, I’m sure there are other issues involved in the Canada-China agreement, but I can’t help but think Canada’s position is strengthened by their ability to track individual cattle.

The timeline keeps changing, but I believe that one way or another, we’ll eventually have a national animal-traceability system in the United States. Producers need that system that’s affordable, non-intrusive, flexible and limited in scope. It’s time, once more, for industry to engage in the process and help shape a system that works.

The United States Animal Health Association and the National Institute for Animal Agriculture will co-host a Joint Strategy Forum on Animal Disease Traceability, to be held Aug. 30-31 in Denver. This is a good opportunity for producers to provide their input, and I hope participation is high. The Forum, according to a USAHA release, is designed to facilitate interaction between State and Tribal animal health officials, animal producers, livestock marketers and handlers, and meat processors that yields valuable input on preliminary standards which are being developed by USDA’s Traceability Regulatory Working Group, expected to be released in mid-August.

“Unless we have a discussion including all parties, the development of a viable animal disease traceability framework will be much more difficult,” says Dr. Richard Breitmeyer, State Veterinarian for California and current president of USAHA.

USDA plans to publish new rules on disease traceability by this winter. “Given that timeline,” says Dr. Michael Coe, co-chair of the Forum Planning Committee, “industry and the States and Tribes need to make their positions known to decision-makers.”

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