U.S. lags beef exporter nations in developing cattle ID system

Computerworld - The U.S. lags behind other major beef-exporting nations in the development and operation of national electronic livestock ID systems key to ensure safe beef exports.
The U.S. agricultural industry is busy looking for funding of a five-year, $600 million Animal Identification Plan to electronically track cattle (see story), but other major beef-exporting countries already have such systems in place.
The U.K., where almost 150 people died from eating beef with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in the mid-1990s, has operated a Cattle Tracking System using ear tags linked to an electronic bar-coded cattle passport since 1998, according to Tony McDougal, spokesman for the U.K.'s Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) in London.
The British Cattle Movement Service operated by DEFRA issued 14.9 million cattle passports this year, and McDougal said the agency can track any one of those animals to its birth herd in "a matter of seconds" through a central database. The U.S. Department of Agriculture took four days to trace a BSE-infected cow in Washington state to what the USDA said was its birth herd in Alberta, an assertion disputed by Canadian agricultural officials while DNA testing is being completed.
McDougal said that the BCMS traces cattle and their movement from a week after birth until they are slaughtered and that it conforms with European Union regulations that mandated such close control of cattle in 1997.
Canada has mandated the tracking of all cattle moving beyond their herds of origin since July 2001, with a national ID program managed by the Calgary, Alberta-based Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA), a nonprofit group whose members include producers, marketing associations and Canadian government agencies. The CCIA began by using both bar-code and radio frequency identification (RFID) tags to identify and track cattle. But as of Jan. 1, 2005, it will require the use of RFID tags only.

Australia in 1999 set up its National Livestock Information Scheme, another RFID-based cattle-tracking system, and currently tracks about 7.5 million out of 28 million head of cattle in the country. The NLIS, which is operated by North Sydney-based Meat & Livestock Australia (MLA), a producer-owned organization, plans to have its cattle-tracking system deployed nationwide by July. Mick Prendergast, manager of the NLIS, said the MLA views cattle tracking and tracing as essential for its export business.
Brazil, which has a cattle population of 162 million, has decided to use RFID-based tracking systems as of April. Empresa Brasileira de Pesquisa Agropecuaria, the Brazilian Agricultural Research Agency, signed a 10-year agreement with Digital Angel Corp. in St. Paul, Minn., to develop a national livestock tracing program, according to Kevin Nieuwsma, president of Digital Angel's RFID division.
Rod Nilsestuen, secretary of the Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection, said that with export markets now slammed shut to U.S. beef, the U.S. can't afford to lag behind the rest of the world in national livestock ID systems.
Nilsestuen said the U.S. needs "to move as quickly as possible" to develop a nationwide livestock electronic ID system and added that he believes that last week's discovery of a single cow with BSE in this country will serve as a catalyst for development of such a system.

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