How Safe is the Food Supply?

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ANIMAL TRACKING ABROAD
While the U.S. has yet to fully implement an animal ID program, such tracking systems have already succeeded, and even yielded ancillary benefits for ranchers in other countries.

In both Canada and Australia, resistance to implementation of animal ID was modest compared to that in the U.S. That was thanks to heavy reliance on exports in those countries’ livestock industries, and their recognition of animal ID’s importance in convincing foreign buyers their beef was safe. In Australia, for example, 65 to 75 percent of industry business comes from exports.

In Canada, like the U.S., ranchers expressed concern about the privacy of a single animal-tracking database. Concern there, however, centered on the possibility that herd information would be accessed by the Canadian Revenue Agency, the country’s equivalent of the Internal Revenue Service. Those concerns, however, proved unfounded, says Julie Stitt, executive director of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA).

Canada rolled out its voluntary program in early 2001, while mandatory participation began in July of 2002. “Once we went mandatory, people didn’t even think about it. It was just the next logical step,” Stitt says. The voluntary program built support for the mandatory compliance, a model Stitt believes might also work in the U.S.

In Canada, each head of cattle is fitted with two tags: a visual tag bearing an identification number, and an RFID tag, which became mandatory last year. RFID tags must be CCIA-approved.

The CCIA database contains information on more than 40 million animals and 150 million transactions, while the agency conducts more than 2,000 trace-backs each year.

CCIA maintains a list of 16 diseases that require immediate reporting, ranging from rabies to anthrax. Key to investigations of diseases like BSE (mad cow) is identification of a cow’s lifetime “cohorts” or herd mates.

RFID ear tags for cattle range in price from $1 to $4, and typical readers, stationary or portable, cost from $800 to $3,000. At the high end, the Alley Master Reader stationary reader, manufactured by Boontech, is capable of registering 10,000 head per hour as they pass through a 2-meter-wide reading area. It runs approximately $28,000.

When the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) detects a diseased animal, the agency immediately reports the case, with the cow’s ID number, to CCIA. Within minutes, CCIA can prepare a complete electronic report of the animal’s history, as well as all known cohorts, plus animals placed in question by contact with that group.

The data is accessible through a Web-based CCIA network to CFIA officials and veterinarians throughout the country. Inspectors typically follow up with specific data requests over the course of an investigation, Stitt says.

To aid the government in locating animals in an investigation, ranchers upload government-provided search parameters into their RFID readers. When a questionable cow is detected, the rancher’s reader issues an alert with the animal’s specific CCIA number, Stitt says.

The first test of the Canadian system came when it was still in its infancy in May 2003, when a cow tested positive for BSE. A trace-back to the cow’s birth, along with a trace-forward of all known cohorts, identified 2,700 animals in question, all of which were destroyed. Officials blamed the case on consumption of cow by-products predating the country’s ban on such feeds.

“It wasn’t the perfect system, because it was young, but we provided tens of thousands of records to CFIA to trace and determine cohort animals. They used CCIA tags and DNA,” Stitt says.

Along with the voluntary start, scalable architecture was key to the Canadian program’s quick success, as was privately held, government- searchable data, Stitt says.

The program has also benefited from rapid advances in RFID technology, including longer range, higher volume monitors. “We started voluntarily, and ended up mandatory, which I think is what the U.S. has to do, because you need that support,” Stitt says.

Michelle Gorman, U.S. regional director for Meat and Livestock Australia, Ltd., the producer-owned company that administers that country’s animal ID program, says there are ancillary benefits of the program, such as the fact that it facilitates everyday herd management.