Agricultural News
Animal Disease Traceability Rule Moves Forward With March Implementation Date
Thu, 28 Feb 2013 11:24:45 CST
Efforts to implement the comprehensive Animal Disease Traceability program is proceeding throughout the cattle industry in the United States according to Dr. Kathy Simmons, chief veterinary officer with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. She says the final rule has been issued from Washington and its implementation goes into effect in March.
"The final rule for Animal Disease Traceability, and that is the movement of animals interstate, was issued by USDA AFIS on January 9th. That rule will be implemented on March 11th. In the rule it states that livestock of the species listed in the rule-and cattle are certainly among those species-that are moved interstate must have official identification and must have accompanying documentation which would be an interstate certificate of veterinarian inspection or other movement document that is approved by the state or tribes.
"What we're hoping to do with this rule is have a system to trace back disease to the origin. This allows us in our disease investigations to deal with smaller numbers of animals. It allows us to have a more efficient trace back system which, in the end, saves dollars to the producer and to the government agencies that serve the producer."
With such a comprehensive goal in mind, the question has been raised: Will this allow us a quick enough response to a contagious disease?
"That's certainly our hope. Right now we're in the process of setting this up. Right now we do not have feeder cattle or cattle under18 months of age. Under this rule there will be a separate rule-making process for these animals. So, I think for right now what we are doing is we are setting the framework so we can have that kind of a response so that we can also compete internationally by saying to other countries, 'Yes, please have the reassurance we can trace back disease."
This reassurance is something the global marketplace is now demanding, Simmons says, but it is not the only driver of ADT.
"It's one of the drivers. There are a number of reasons. I think the primary reason is to trace back disease and to protect our herds. I think one of the benefits, as we term it, of this system is that it does us reassurance to our global partners in the global market that we can trace back disease and that we are on par with the rest of the world in doing that."
Implementing such a broad system is very difficult and, Simmons said, that is part of the reason why animals under the age of 18 were not included in the original process.
"I think we did that and we advocated for that because this is a fairly large population of animals in the scheme of movement and we wanted to learn from our initial efforts and do it right. It will allow us to establish performance thresholds that we can use when we introduce this group of animals. And they are not covered under the official identification portion of it which means that the official identification of these animals is not currently required under the rule. Many of these animals are already identified, as you well know, under other systems we have in place. So, I think it's not so much that we have a deficit there, it's that we're bringing everybody up to the federal guidelines in a step-wise fashion rather than all at once."
There is a price tag to the traceability system, but Simmons says it is not yet clear whether state taxpayers or federal taxpayers will pay the lion's share of the costs of implementing this system.
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