APHIS: Animal Disease Traceability Meeting

Animal disease traceability will be the main discussion and topic on USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service meeting of the Secretary's Advisory Committee. The teleconference call will be a 5 hour meeting, which will discuss animal health matters and the traceability framework. The public is encouraged to participate in the meetings.

APHIS Teleconference Meeting Details:

First meeting will be on March 4, 2011, from 12:00 noon to 5:00 p.m. (EST) Dial-In: 888-790-3291 Passcode: 1411045

The other meetings will take place on May 13 and on July 15, which will be teleconferences as well, and will be open to the public. Public participation at these meetings will be listen only.

Since the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) was scraped in 2010, the APHIS has been holding public meetings and discussions on the proposed new traceability system, which will be the Animal disease traceability (ADT) system in the United States.

APHIS will continue its planned and scheduled meetings this year, in an effort to discuss animal traceability, and the need to identify diseases in livestock.

APHIS has spent most of 2010 developing the framework and structure for the proposed new Animal disease traceability, which is intended to be more flexible and producer friendly system, and at the same time providing reliable data for animal movement traceability. Individual states, tribes and producers will have a hands on approach to traceability, but must use ear tags and recording of individual animal ID’s to a centralized state maintained database.

The end result must be a traceability framework, which will enable APHIS to react to animal disease outbreaks, in an effort to eradicate and quarantine livestock in the event of a reported outbreak. Minimizing cost and loss to producers and the livestock industry is the ultimate priority.

By George Luker © Copyright 2011 Livestock-ID