Government/Military Trends
March 2004
Can RFID protect the nation’s beef supply?
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RFID is making news as a possible solution for a national livestock identification system. The December discovery of a single cow with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in a herd in Washington state renewed interest in a national tracking system. This system, it is hoped, would make it faster and easier to trace the origins of diseased or infected cattle for BSE as well as other infectious diseases that the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) tracks.
National livestock identification to trace diseased animals is not a new idea. The current initiative, dubbed the US Animal Identification Plan, or USAIP, was developed by a consortium of livestock producers, processors, and the USDA in September of 2003. The goal of the USAIP is to identify all 30 million cattle in the United States by July 2005, most likely using RFID tags as the method of identification. The cost estimates for the infrastructure development of this program are between $500 - $600 million. There’s only one problem: as of December 2003, the USAIP has no funding.
Many questions surround how the program will be rolled out and paid for, especially since the plan calls for all participants in the cattle industry to shoulder some costs – something that many producers are unhappy about. Of course, the cost of building the USAIP infrastructure is tiny compared to the ongoing costs of losing export markets for US beef. With the discovery of the Washington cow and the subsequent shrinking of the export market, cattle producers are now more interested in an ID program.
The goal of the USAIP program is to trace the origin of a diseased animal within a 48 hour period. This would be a 48-hour improvement over the December case. When the BSE cow was first discovered, the work to find the origin herd was a very manual, labor intensive process that involved tracing paper records, interviewing cattle owners, livestock dealers and market operators. The information gathered from these sources was then cross-referenced with records maintained by producers and processors. Using an electronic tracing system that tracks all movements of individual animals would eliminate the labor and time-intensive nature of these manual traces.
Fortunately, ID programs already exist in other countries, so there are models of how to develop the right infrastructure; as well, RFID products are already in use in some of these programs.
Livestock ID programs are in phased development in Canada, Brazil (in a voluntary program) and Australia. The vendors who supply these nations with RFID tags and readers– Allflex USA Inc., and Digital Angel Corporation of the United States and Aleis International Pty, Ltd. in Australia – are building a strong case for using RFID technology as part of the USAIP system.
To ease its introduction, the USAIP will initially be a voluntary program, with costs shouldered both by the government and by private industry. Because of the gap between what is needed and what exists today, the USAIP recommends a phased approach to total compliance.
The National Food Animal Identification Task Force, which worked with the USDA to come up with the USAIP, made recommendations to the USDA on how best to implement the system in phases:
Phase 1: Any and all premises participating in livestock production, including farms, auction barns and processing facilities will get an ID number that is unique throughout the US. Implemented on the state level, this phase is slated to start in
July 2004
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Phase 2: All livestock will receive unique individual ID numbers by July 2005. For pork and poultry, groups or lots will receive unique ID numbers. Animals will have visible eartags that feature the unique ID numbers.
Phase 3: With all animals tagged, all animal movements will be tracked electronically, with reporting of interstate movements beginning in July 2005. Intrastate movement tracking begins in July 2006.
The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) will be responsible for maintaining the centralized database that collects all ID information.
Though a recommended plan is in place, many aspects of the infrastructure remain unresolved. Will producers need tagging stations at every farm? Or will tagging stations be set up? Will producers need to have readers? If not, how will the movements be tracked? How much will tags cost? Because these are animals, not fixed parts, producers worry about how the readers would be set up, since you can’t set up a fixed reader on open range land to track wondering cattle.
Electronic tagging seems to be an easy solution to the problem of tracking animals. However, between the financial burden, the technology upgrade required and industry concerns, the USAIP will require much debate and discussion within the industry before any plan is implemented.1
1 References:
http://usaip.info/faq.htm: FAQ on the US Animal Identification Plan
www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobile/story/0,0801,88625,00.html : Industry and government have plans for nationwide cattle ID system, but funding is lacking (12/29/03)
www.computerworld.com, Quicklink #43765 : “Sidebar: RFID tags key to some cattle programs,” 12/30/03
www.ifbf.org/publication/spokesman : “National livestock ID system speeds forward,” 1/5/04
www.computerworld.com, Quicklink # 43795 : “Agriculture Secretary Backs National Livestock ID System,” 1/5/04
www.internetnews.com/wireless/article.php/3294481 : “ ‘Mad’ scramble for electronic livestock tracking,” 1/2/04