October 23, 2003
US' Livestock Identification Plan for Managing Animal Disease Outbreak Will Be Realized Soon
A national livestock identification plan is about to realise when the U.S. Animal Health Assn. (USAHA) passed a key resolution in San Diego last week during its annual meeting to accept a draft of the U.S. Animal Identification Plan.
For months, there has been improved development of the plan. It is a cooperative effort by state and federal agencies and the livestock industry that is billed as a "work in progress."
The vote, which was taken Oct. 14 after a lengthy discussion in the livestock identification committee, endorses future work on the nationwide, all-species plan, which will be phased in over a period of years.
The plan aims to implement a U.S. plan that will in due course be able to trace movements of animals within 48 hours in the event of a disease outbreak. Creation of the information system capable of handling the workload will be a major cost for the system. A needs assessment for the database is currently being conducted for the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
In the past, disease eradication programs, such as brucellosis and tuberculosis, have depended on numbered eartag identifiers, but with the success of those programs at eliminating the target diseases, increasingly fewer animals in the U.S. have permanent identification.
The new plan, which has been under development by a state-federal-industry team, notes that confidentiality of "data and access to it, including FOIA (the Freedom of Information Act), must be adequately addressed ... before the industry will support implementation." It is expected that agriculture will be designated as "critical infrastructure" for the purpose of homeland security, which would allow for confidentiality of such data, according to those on the development committee.
According to Feedstuffs, USDA saw the endorsement of USAHA as key to advancing the national animal identification plan. Bill Hawks, USDA undersecretary, said before the vote was taken that if the USAHA resolution supported the plan, USDA "would go forward with the development of some pilot projects."
However, he predicted the program would not go into formal rulemaking because USDA "is supportive of a voluntary program that is industry driven."
National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) spokesperson Kara Flynn said, "Of course we applaud the vote, this movement is very positive." NPPC has endorsed the livestock identification plan, which would have animal disease control benefits in preference to country of origin labeling (COOL), which Flynn described as "very costly and with no benefits."
She noted that recent outbreaks of low-pathogenic avian influenza in Virginia, exotic Newcastle disease in California and the case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy in Canada all proves the urgent need for a national animal identification system.
