by Lynne Brakeman
Animals tagged with computerized IDs may assist in the war against food-borne pathogens contaminating the nation's food supply, and help producers and processors increase profits.
That's the message from the Livestock Conservation Institute (LCI), the Bowling Green, Ky.-based organization which sponsored the National Livestock Identification Symposium held recently in St. Louis.
More than 200 representatives of the livestock and meat packing/processing industries attended the symposium to debate and discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls of computerized animal identification systems.
Among the convention attendees were James Hodges, AMI's senior vice president of regulatory affairs who also made a presentation, and Harold Andersen, a meat grading and certification supervisor for USDA.
"A livestock producer needs good information along the production chain to track each animal's feed efficiency, genetics and lean-to-fat ratio," said Nancy Robinson, associate manager of government and industry affairs for the Livestock Marketing Association, and chairman of LCI's Identification Committee. "That's possible with the identification technology available today."
LCI held the symposium in hopes of stimulating the meat industry into action in the face of the proposed Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point regulation and mounting consumer concerns about the presence of deadly pathogens in the food supply.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 50 E. coli 0157:H7 outbreaks in the United States during the past two years and estimated they may have caused 20,000 illnesses each year. These statistics galvanize consumer groups like the Safe Food Coalition and Safe Tables Our Priority to petition Congress for solutions.
Last year's congressional Pathogen Reduction Act included a recommendation that an identification system be developed to enable farm-to-table traceability.
The symposium demonstrated the benefits of creating an identification system in response to consumer concern about food safety, Robinson said.
In addition, mandatory identification requirements in place or being considered in other countries will eventually make it necessary for exporters of meat products to implement individual animal identification, Robinson added.
Opportunity knocks
"The beef industry has an incredible opportunity for additional profits [through] electronic ID," stressed Darrell Wilkes, president of Denver-based Integrated Beef Technologies.
Wilkes was one of eight speakers who discussed the potential benefits of automatic identification technology for beef cattle, dairy cattle, sheep, pork, horses and ostriches.
Representatives of various regulatory agencies (USDA, FDA and CDC) discussed the federal government's perspective on the issue. There seems to be a consensus that the technology is coming, but it cannot be mandated.
Manufacturers of automatic identification devices for the livestock industry also made presentations on available technologies. Although remote frequency identification (RF/ID) transponders attracted the most attention, bar coding and touch-memory buttons were also marked as advanced viable methods for maintaining a unique identification number for each animal.
Wilkes, a pioneer in the field of electronic livestock identification, based his proposition on the economic theories of W. Edwards Demming, the economist who developed the concept of Total Quality Management.
Wilkes asserted that automatic identification systems could help producers and processors identify their "costs of non-conformance," or the cost of the waste created when an animal's fat-to-muscle ratio is too high or too low.
Farm-to-table electronic identification carries the potential to add $20 of profit to the value of each steer by eliminating waste, Wilkes claimed.
"Over the past 10 years, the profit per cow unit has been less than $40 a head," Wilkes said. "Twenty dollars of added profit is a good improvement in profitability in the beef industry. It is more than adequate to drive the development of integrated beef identification systems."(See story, page 49.)
The pork industry has been investigating the idea of a national identification system since a task force report in 1985, said Beth Lautner, vice president of swine health and pork safety for the National Pork Producers Council.
"The delegates supported mandatory identification of slaughter hogs back to their farm of origin in 1986," Lautner noted.
"The task force's position 10 years ago was that an identification system must provide potential for product improvement and enhance product image and consumer confidence-the same things that we're saying today," she added.
AMI is also an advocate for animal identification, whether it be individual animal ID or lot ID, Hodges said. "The viability of producer-packer strategic alliances or partnerships obviously requires the use of effective individual animal identification," he added.
No blame game
The meat industry has no desire to create an identification system to assign blame for pathogen outbreaks, Hodges stressed. "It is not our desire to create new penalties for farmers, which many have mistakenly said is our objective."
AMI is interested in creating cooperative relationships that would encourage herd improvement.
The organization is not interested in providing carcass data to cattle feeders, hog producers or other suppliers that could be used as a price negotiating tool in futures marketing, Hodges said.
Harold Andersen, a meat grading and certification supervisor for USDA, has first-hand experience with that problem. He attended the symposium to gain information to help revitalize a USDA program called the Beef Carcass Data Service.
Andersen says that the Beef Carcass Data Service is still used on the West Coast to convey quality information from packing plants to producers. However, because of problems with control of access to the information collected by the service, the Beef Carcass Data Service is no longer used by packers in the Midwest.
"It gave producers too much information," Andersen said. "That's one reason the Beef Carcass Data Service system got phased out throughout the central United States. There is a traditional adversarial relationship that causes resistance to these quality-improvement systems. That attitude is changing, but not nearly as fast as it has in other industries."
But Andersen is adamant that a mandated ID regulatory system, like those implemented in Britain, the Netherlands and Belgium, would be unsuccessful in the United States.
"They live under a different system than we do," Andersen said of the Europeans. "You would have no success doing a mandatory system in this country. You would have a mass rebellion on your hands."
Anatomy of an electronic identification system
The following is an outline of an electronic identification system as it would apply to the beef industry.
It was provided by Darrell Wilkes, president of Denver-based Integrated Beef Technologies, and Harold Andersen, a USDA meat grading and certification supervisor.
On the ranch or farm
-- A radio frequency electronic identification (RF/ID) ear tag would be attached to the ear of each calf. The number contained in the ear tag identifies a complete computer data file for the calf. An RF/ID reader activates the tag, automatically sending the identification number to the computer, which accesses the data file. Hand-held readers that include small computer terminals can be used for collecting or inputting data.
At the feedlot
-- The animal walks down a chute where a radio frequency antenna reads its ear tag, opening a computer file for that specific animal. Thus, a computer file is generated for every animal in the feedlot.
-- The animal then passes through a processing chute and past a video scanning device. The system measures how tall the animal is, how long it is, and how thick it is by using video digitizing (an old technology). It describes the biological type of the steer or heifer. That data goes into the computer file opened by the electronic ear tag.
-- The animal then passes the ultrasound station. Since the major cost of non-conformance in the beef industry is producing too much fat, Wilkes measures fat with ultrasound, which automatically goes into the computer file.
-- The animal steps onto a scale. "Now we have the body-type, fat thickness and weight," Wilkes noted.
-- The animals repeat the process about 90 days later. The computer would have 30,000 growth curves charted in a 30,000-head feedlot.
-- The system computes how many more days on feed that animal needs in order to reach its optimum end point. The computer then opens the gate and the animal walks into a sorted group that will be fed the same number of days to reach the optimum end weight.
On the processing floor
-- The animal's ID number could be tied electronically with an identifier for the carcass conveying system. USDA inspectors grading for quality could quickly identify the carcass by electronically reading the RF/ID tag. They would enter yield information directly into the computer file at an on-floor terminal. That information would be electronically sent back to the producer by modem, and/or collected in an analytical database by the processor.
In the packing plant
-- The electronic identity of carcasses entering the plant for processing would be linked to bar-code identification of the packaged product.
In the restaurant
or grocery store
-- The electronic identification trail would enable processors to determine exactly where in the processing cycle infection had occurred if pathogens were detected. Appropriate action to stem consumer concerns could then be taken.