August 11, 2011

Upcoming traceability system to boost US meat cargoes

A new proposed regulation targeted at improving the nation's ability to trace animal disease outbreaks will help widen access to foreign markets that import US livestock products, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said.

"This system, in our view, puts us in a much better competitive circumstance today," Vilsack said in a press conference while announcing the proposed rule. "Other countries have been using [traceability] as a way to gain a market advantage. We believe this takes that market advantage away."

Australia was one country that used the occasion of a US case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in 2003 -and the ensuing bans from lucrative export markets such as Japan- to increase market share in Asia by trumpeting an effective traceability program. The US beef industry has since made a big recovery in exports to Asia, but the lack of an organised traceability system has limited potential gains, industry officials have repeatedly said.

Reporters on the call, however, expressed in their questioning some scepticism about the new, more "flexible" iteration of the failed National Animal Identification System and its ability to improve the nation's ability to pinpoint animal-disease events. Rather than ask for producers to register their premises, as NAIS did, the new rule focuses on identification of animals or groups of animals through federally approved devices, such as ear tags, during interstate movement.

"We would not be proposing this rule if we weren't confident that it would do a better job than in the past in responses to disease outbreaks," Vilsack said. He noted that BSE investigations, for example, have taken as much as 150 says. The new system should cut animal-disease investigations to a matter of days or, in more complex cases, weeks, but "certainly not 150 days," he said.

Together with quality and pricing attributes, traceability assurance should make US meat exports "more saleable," and that will help pay for the new traceability system's estimated US$14 million-per-year price tag, Vilsack said.

USDA is seeking comment on the proposed rule for 90 days from its publication, on August 11, in the Federal Register.