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Animal ID gets boost from USDA, but time, cost are obstacles
“USDA has worked with partners at the federal and state levels and in industry for the past year and a half on the adoption of standards for a verifiable nationwide animal identification system to help enhance the speed and accuracy of our response to disease outbreaks across many different animal species,” Veneman said. “I have asked USDA’s Chief Information Officer to expedite the development of the technology architecture to implement this system as a top priority.” Veneman’s statement “provides an element of acceleration to the work being done,” Glenn Slack, president of the National Institute for Animal Agriculture, told Food Chemical News. The NIAA has played host to a public-private development team that last fall unveiled a draft “U.S. Animal Identification Plan” (USAIP). Team members include representatives of industry, states and USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (see FCN Aug. 25, Page 1). “We welcome the heightened priority that the administration is putting on a national identification system,” Slack said. “We’ll do all we can to assist in speeding it up. However, it’s important not to put the cart before the horse. There are things that have to be done before you can fully implement the plan. You can’t just go to RFID [radio frequency identification] tagging of every cow in the nation. It’s imperative that premises ID is in place first.” Implementation of the USAIP is scheduled to take place in three phases: Phase I, which involves premises identification, is currently set to begin by July. This phase would require establishment of standardized premises identification numbers for all production operations, markets, assembly points, exhibitions and processing plants. “Perhaps there are steps we can take to get the states to do [premises ID] early,” Slack said. “There is a methodical order of things that need to be done. We can’t just snap our fingers and do it.” Phase II would enable individual or group/lot identification for interstate and intrastate commerce. Phase III involves retrofitting remaining processing plants and markets and other industry segments with appropriate technology to enhance traceability of animals throughout the livestock marketing system. If the Bush administration gives priority to the USAIP, bureaucratic obstacles will be fewer, Slack predicted, continuing, “The other big question is money. Who’s going to pay for it? The secretary says this is something that’s needed to protect public health. It’s logical that tax dollars be spent to set up a world class system.” Although Veneman singled out USDA’s chief technology officer to carry the identification plan forward, Slack said that official’s involvement would be a new development. “I’m not going to say we’ve never heard of him,” he explained. “Perhaps we’ve interacted with some of his deputies without knowing who they were. We’ll welcome the expertise of those folks.” Mandatory versus voluntary Veneman’s statement drew criticism from Carol Tucker Foreman, director of the Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute, who noted that it “stopped short of supporting a mandatory national system for tracing all meat animals from the slaughterhouse back to the farm of origin. A voluntary or piecemeal system is not sufficient to protect either public health or consumer confidence.” In an interview earlier in the week, NIAA’s Slack told FCN that the issue of mandatory versus voluntary participation in the USAIP had not been resolved. He said mandatory participation might be put off for one or more years until everyone was comfortable with the system and USDA could enforce it. “Industry is saying it’s got to be mandatory if it’s going to work,” Slack said. “I’ve been surprised by the number of entities calling for mandatory.” Following Veneman’s statement, Slack said her choice of the phrase “verifiable nationwide…system” was a clear indication that USDA would move to mandatory participation as soon as possible. The draft USAIP was presented to the October meeting of the U.S. Animal Health Association, which gave the plan its tentative blessing. “They accepted the plan as a work in progress,” Slack said, noting that the draft remains open for comment by stakeholders until Jan. 31 and beyond, if necessary. Meanwhile, the USAIP development team has formed species work groups to evaluate the plan as it relates to beef cattle, dairy cattle, bison, swine, sheep, goats, camelids (alpacas and llamas), horses, cervids (deer and elk), poultry (eight species, including game birds) and aquaculture (11 species). “They’ll analyze as to the pluses and minuses and decide what needs changing,” Slack said. The NIAA has scheduled a national animal identification symposium for May 18-20 in Chicago. The various species work groups will report back at that time. Pressure from Congress Slack noted that the development team is also under pressure from Congress to move up its timetable. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) last week sought to revive interest in the mandatory traceability legislation he introduced in June (see FCN June 9, Page 24). Schumer said in a news release that the “the failure to implement a national meat tracking system is complicating efforts to track where the beef from the affected cow went and makes it harder to track other meat-carried diseases like E. coli and Salmonella.” He urged Congress to pass his bill “despite the meat industry’s fierce opposition.” However, both consumer advocates and industry trade associations lined up in support of a national identification plan following Veneman’s statement. The American Meat Institute said the plan “will dramatically enhance animal disease investigations. AMI has a policy in place supporting mandatory animal traceability.” At a Dec. 30 teleconference, Terry Stokes, CEO of the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, told reporters that NCBA had been involved in development of the proposed identification system, “and it is critical for us to provide leadership in implementing it.” He said a uniform system might be cheaper than the current patchwork of private traceability systems. “The program will cost, but it will pay in the long run,” he said. The National Milk Producers Federation noted in a statement that it has “long supported a mandatory, comprehensive animal ID program for livestock of all ages.” USDA’s endorsement of that concept “will help provide the necessary impetus to make such a program an effective tool for monitoring the 100 million cattle, and millions of other livestock, in the U.S.” Among consumer advocacy groups, Consumers Union “praised USDA’s decision to require an identification system for cattle so that they can be traced from birth to the slaughterhouse.” The Center for Science in the Public Interest said an animal ID system “is an important improvement that has too long been delayed due to opposition from the cattle industry.” Traceability providers unite Last fall a coalition of five leading agricultural data service companies announced plans to create the beef industry’s first data exchange standards. The five companies, which have been involved in creating the USAIP, said they are establishing the Beef Information Exchange “to address the need for a uniform set of data movement standards for the nation’s beef industry producers.” The organizing companies include AgInfoLink USA; APEIS Corporation in Norfolk, Neb.; Merge Interactive, Sebastian, Fla.; IMI Global, Inc., Platte, Mo., and Micro Beef Technologies, Amarillo, Texas. Todd Adams, APEIS director of sales and marketing, told FCN early last week that the five companies were waiting for cues from USDA before issuing a news release on the proposed animal identification plan. “What we’re doing is species-specific for the sake of the beef industry,” he said. “We hope to fall under the USAIP and their guidelines. We like to say we can do it far sooner than 48 hours [the proposed deadline for traceback set by USAIP]. We’re not calling for them to speed up their timetable for implementation.” An official with another traceability company told FCN that the mad cow disease case demonstrated that “the emperor has no clothes” when it comes to current USDA traceback policy. He said the proposed USAIP has serious flaws, because it requires government to have access to all the meat industry’s data. “We need separation of government from business despite government’s responsibility for public health,” the industry source said, praising creation of the Beef Information Exchange. “Just as we formed VISA for banks, the BIE is an association of competitors for the purpose of information exchange,” he said. “It’s a trusted data custodian that government can access if needed — rather than a system subject to government data mining for who knows what purpose.” Food Chemical News, January 5, 2004, Volume 45, Number 47, Copyright © 2004, CRC Press I LLC |