USDA Announces New Direction for Animal Disease Traceability
March 2, 2010
USDA Announces New Direction for Animal Disease Traceability
On February 5, USDA announced a new, flexible framework for animal disease traceability in the United States. The framework will provide the basic tenets of an improved animal disease traceability capability for the country. USDA’s efforts will:
- Only apply to animals moved in interstate commerce;
- Be administered by the States and Tribal Nations to provide more flexibility;
- Encourage the use of lower-cost technology; and
- Be implemented transparently through federal regulations and the full rulemaking process.
NMPF continues to favor a mandatory animal identification system, national in scope, and one that allows 48-hour traceability across the food chain. While the recent USDA announcement recognizes the political struggle of attempting to create a national system, NMPF said in a statement that “we remain concerned about the potential incompatibility of 50 varying state systems, particularly if some don’t rely on currently available technology, such as RFID tags. Moving forward, we will work with the USDA to ensure the dairy industry is at the animal ID forefront as a collective insurance policy in the event of an animal disease emergency.”
