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Well-known member
Future holds tracking system for cattle
Feb 23, 2005 (The Roanoke Times - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- If you were grocery shopping in Japan and bought a piece of beef, you could scan it and immediately get a printout detailing everything you'd want to know about the purchase.
The detail would include the birth date of the cow, information about the cattleman, and the date when and location where the meat was produced.
The printout follows all the steps of the animal, from birth to death.
But don't expect a system that sophisticated becoming standard practice anytime soon in the United States.
Cattlemen have resisted such costly technology. But some industry experts said a tracking system could financially benefit cattlemen because they can market attributes inherent to their product. Those attributes could add value, and ultimately, a higher price, for their beef.
Blue Ridge Premium Beef, a Dublin-based label and partnership of five cattlemen, voluntarily controls and traces its livestock from birth to slaughter. Its meat contains no preservatives, hormones, added water or coloring.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to create a national network that would track, within 48 hours, every contact a diseased animal has had in its life. The USDA says such tracking is necessary because a single Holstein infected with mad-cow disease led more than 30 countries, including Japan, to close their borders to U.S. beef in late 2003.
But that associated dollar loss and blemish to the cattle industry could have been avoided if the USDA had had a way to track the source of that particular cow, one cattleman said.
The value of the slaughtered cattle was reduced by $175 per head in the past 13 months because the United States lost the Japanese market, said Mike Goldwasser, a partner in Blue Ridge Premium Beef. The demand decreased, and the beef that would have been shipped to Japan ended up staying in the United States.
One of the most irritating things, Goldwasser said, was when the USDA said it would not allow willing U.S. packers to check for mad-cow disease. Some packers were willing to pay to trace the disease, Goldwasser said.
"That would have been good for those packers and the U.S. As a result, we lost the Japanese market. It will be very hard to get that market back."
The USDA rationale, he said, was that the service would have had to be available to all countries.
So how does the United States remain competitive in the global marketplace?
You have to look at what consumers want, said Kevin Smith, assistant director of export services with the U.S. Meat Export Federation in Denver.
Smith, a speaker at the Virginia Agriculture Summit in Roanoke on Tuesday, said consumers outside the U.S. border have shifted from a "tell me and I'll believe it" philosophy to a "show me what you're doing" philosophy.
Goldwasser said he and his partners continually field questions from consumers, asking about the origin of Blue Ridge Premium Beef.
"If you can verify the source of the beef and, as a result, get a premium price for it, more power to you," he said.
The cattle industry is reluctant to accept tracing programs, Goldwasser said.
"Cattle people are very paranoid."
If the government can trace a diseased animal to a producer, then that producer becomes liable. Cattlemen prefer to remain anonymous, he said, adding that they should accept liability as part of their production and be proud of what they produce.
As envisioned in Washington, D.C., the tracking network would cover not only cattle, but horses, poultry, bison, sheep, hogs and farmed fish as well.
Even children who raise and exhibit an animal as a 4-H project would be part of the network.
One of the chief ideas under consideration would involve electronic tags on animals' ears. The USDA has funded testing of the technology in Idaho and other states. Smith thinks some type of mandatory national tracking system will be in place in four to seven years.
But that system would track only from ranch to slaughter, whereas in Japan the system tracks cattle from birth to the retail purchase.
Feb 23, 2005 (The Roanoke Times - Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News via COMTEX) -- If you were grocery shopping in Japan and bought a piece of beef, you could scan it and immediately get a printout detailing everything you'd want to know about the purchase.
The detail would include the birth date of the cow, information about the cattleman, and the date when and location where the meat was produced.
The printout follows all the steps of the animal, from birth to death.
But don't expect a system that sophisticated becoming standard practice anytime soon in the United States.
Cattlemen have resisted such costly technology. But some industry experts said a tracking system could financially benefit cattlemen because they can market attributes inherent to their product. Those attributes could add value, and ultimately, a higher price, for their beef.
Blue Ridge Premium Beef, a Dublin-based label and partnership of five cattlemen, voluntarily controls and traces its livestock from birth to slaughter. Its meat contains no preservatives, hormones, added water or coloring.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture is trying to create a national network that would track, within 48 hours, every contact a diseased animal has had in its life. The USDA says such tracking is necessary because a single Holstein infected with mad-cow disease led more than 30 countries, including Japan, to close their borders to U.S. beef in late 2003.
But that associated dollar loss and blemish to the cattle industry could have been avoided if the USDA had had a way to track the source of that particular cow, one cattleman said.
The value of the slaughtered cattle was reduced by $175 per head in the past 13 months because the United States lost the Japanese market, said Mike Goldwasser, a partner in Blue Ridge Premium Beef. The demand decreased, and the beef that would have been shipped to Japan ended up staying in the United States.
One of the most irritating things, Goldwasser said, was when the USDA said it would not allow willing U.S. packers to check for mad-cow disease. Some packers were willing to pay to trace the disease, Goldwasser said.
"That would have been good for those packers and the U.S. As a result, we lost the Japanese market. It will be very hard to get that market back."
The USDA rationale, he said, was that the service would have had to be available to all countries.
So how does the United States remain competitive in the global marketplace?
You have to look at what consumers want, said Kevin Smith, assistant director of export services with the U.S. Meat Export Federation in Denver.
Smith, a speaker at the Virginia Agriculture Summit in Roanoke on Tuesday, said consumers outside the U.S. border have shifted from a "tell me and I'll believe it" philosophy to a "show me what you're doing" philosophy.
Goldwasser said he and his partners continually field questions from consumers, asking about the origin of Blue Ridge Premium Beef.
"If you can verify the source of the beef and, as a result, get a premium price for it, more power to you," he said.
The cattle industry is reluctant to accept tracing programs, Goldwasser said.
"Cattle people are very paranoid."
If the government can trace a diseased animal to a producer, then that producer becomes liable. Cattlemen prefer to remain anonymous, he said, adding that they should accept liability as part of their production and be proud of what they produce.
As envisioned in Washington, D.C., the tracking network would cover not only cattle, but horses, poultry, bison, sheep, hogs and farmed fish as well.
Even children who raise and exhibit an animal as a 4-H project would be part of the network.
One of the chief ideas under consideration would involve electronic tags on animals' ears. The USDA has funded testing of the technology in Idaho and other states. Smith thinks some type of mandatory national tracking system will be in place in four to seven years.
But that system would track only from ranch to slaughter, whereas in Japan the system tracks cattle from birth to the retail purchase.
