Regional Outreach Meetings

“Next Steps” to Advance Traceability

Spring 2017

Dr. Sunny Geiser-Novotny

Good morning everyone thanks for joining us today as Neil mentioned I'm going to go through an 

assessment that we recently published on our website in 2013.

ADT through was APHIS communicated that we conduct an assessment to evaluate the effectiveness 

ADT to advance or tracing capabilities so that's what this assessment was undertaken. 

I'm going to go through the next couple of slides go through some of the parameters that we used in 

that evaluation and explain why those are important one of them includes the trace performance it's 

measures we also looked at data regarding national traceability in to confirm cases identified by the 

slaughter and then also some gaps identified that we received through outreach and feedback through 

State individuals and participation's. 

So from the beginning ADT was a performance based program and in 2010 they were measures switch 

trace for performance measures bayou state federal working group that provided put input into and 

basically with those in the administration record keeping official identification applied distributed and 

also the movement documentation of ICDI's. 

And so States worked with us to utilize exercises of an official ID or a number taken off of the ICDU's to 

conduct these trace performance measures also use actual traces to find this information as well. 

And the purpose of these is to document the progress and the state capabilities related to traceability 

and then also identify cattle so then hopefully in the future we know what those gaps are and 

Implement actions and moving forward. 

There is two key factors that are measured when completing a trace performance measure and we're 

doing these exercises right now where actual traces what is the elapsed time that it takes two answer 
for activities covered under the trace performance measures and that elapsed time starts when that 

individual receives the number and ends when that information is found on the completion of these 

activities. 

• One, and so for number one in what state was the imported in was the animal officially 

identified and so you're in Virginia we received an animal from Pennsylvania but the visa applied 

to those e-40 Neil mentioned with a ride tag could just tell by the tech that the state the animal 

was identified in. 

• Two, where in your state wasn't animal officially identified so you can find the location in 

Virginia or whatever state you were when that tagged was officially applied. 

• Three, from what state was an animal shipped so even if that animal was in Pennsylvania it 

doesn't mean that it was shipped into Virginia from Pennsylvania to determine the actual 

location from the state that it shipped from. 

• Four, from what location and what state was the animals shipped so if that animal moved out of 

Virginia so you can determine the location where it shipped from. 

And then II parameters of the percent of the activity assessment we can on how often did you find that 

information and the question opposed by the activity. And so when you consider those two key factors 

you can see that the key is successful tracing is through a retrieval and accurate information. 

And since the Inception of the rule and that basic framework we have been really successful in 

increasing the records of official identification distributed and applied and also records of the movement 

documentation. 

And so one of our favorite slides on the left hand side a year's worth of important ICDI’s that have 

shared this with us and looking on the right it's a database so if you consider the trace and you have to 

sort through boxes to find what year you're looking for the time and energy and money spend on that 

versus entering that ID into the database where you have the information and where that information is 

located and you receive it within seconds so that's probably been the most successful with animal 

disease traceability. 
And so we have these traces and then to get started we did have a baseline survey for these activities 

and those were records were in place where ADT started and one the program kicked in. 

Those were used to be keyed in for each activity and Baseline and so then we measured improvement 

for each agreement since rules published in 2014 we have our first comparison that was based on 

records from 2012 through 2014 and then for the 2015 utilize records from 2003 through 2015 so we're 

just wrapping up our 2016 proper agreement trace performance measures and that information will be 

available soon. 

So I know this has a lot of information on slide so we'll just review it fairly briefly if you look at the far 

left column those are the activities that I went through from where identification occurred from where 

what application movement occurred from one through. 

The second column after that were the baselines so those are the numbers generated with records in 

place before traceability was finalized and then the first and second years comparisons. The first column 

underneath that that were successfully completed and next to that is the elapsed time spend for each of 

those activities. 

And you can see without going through these that we have made a substantially improvement in not 

only the percent successfully completed for each of those parameters but then also the elapsed time. 

Considering we are at 11 days for a elapsed time baseline in one to two days depending on the 

movement of the activity and averaging around 80 - 90% completed trace so we definitely made some 

improvement for those measures. 

Next I'm going to go through some records that we handle that are from tuberculosis cases and where 

identified at Slaughter and so if you look at you will see the total cases on the second column and the 

whether that animal was successfully traced, they trace indirectly we're animals that were successfully 

traced because they had records what's official ID and movement documentations. 

And then in the First Column your will see that the type of identification animal have and no 

identification we're official identification and so these records were we took from 2010 to the end of 

fiscal year 2016 the end of September we had 38 cases total and that time period and that equavulates 

to 20 cases in feeder cattle and 18 cases then the old cattle, where you can see or that 26 of those were 

successfully traced but what I want you to key on is that that 9 out of 12 even with unofficial ID were 

successfully traced but all of the official ID have been traced in this example.
And so without official identification or without any identification we can still have successful Trace so 

we can have enough records that official ID it really helps and makes the trace successful. 

So how are we doing we talked about that flexible basic training administration identification 

implication for covering animals moving interstate we've been successful we show that through our 

trace performance measures and through Slaughter cases but we also have flexibility and build some 

inherent gaps so we recognize that we determine that based on conversations with some significant 

gaps still exist in the system. 

The primary gaps and challenges that we identify from our feedback through our industry but also 

through recent conversations what state officials and the most significant Gap in the current framework 

is that that the official ID requirement only applies to livestock that move interstate and so when you 

consider that can change location multiple times or move through multiple markets how are they 

moved within the state it is a potential for disease spread and that animal might never get identified 

across state lines. 

The other issue we brought into is that the records may not exist and so you might pick up one or two 

and not the whole history for that animal and that is often incomplete and we often get back to how to 

trace an animal with no identification it's virtually impossible. 

This is one of the most frequent exemptions that must be confusing they were put in there to provide 

that traceability to figure out the livestock market or for us and examining the moments and where 

official identification might have been needed to occur it's really hard to decipher where when that 

animal should have been officially ID’d or if it needed movement documentation. 

So we have to consider the moving interest interstate the official ID and does it needs to be listed on I 

ICDI's website and it would be really helpful and at the same time it would get really hard for us in terms 

for you all deciphering monitoring and enforcing of the regulations. 

The other thing is that Neil mentioned is that the right tags we rely on low cost technology for official 

identification visually tagged. And that the system would have been really helpful when an animal has a 

tag we can trace it back and also has its limitations so if you're trying to move animals through the 

Commerce and you have a tag that has been beat up or filthy and you have to catch that animal multiple 

times to be able to read it so you can get the movement document it's not letting us achieve what we 

need for the Commerce. 
The other thing we run into is if you look at the bottom picture on the slide as an accredited veterinarian 

he did what he needed to do and recorded the official identification numbers to ICDI but I can only 

imagine how long it took him to do that. 

And when you think about what we need to do in tracing how much work is that did numbers get 

transferred because there is a lot of times where numbers are incorrect that are captured and it's just 

not as efficient as it could be. And I think in the beginning what we talked about what the assessment on 

the publication of 2013 there's always an indication the beef feeders have included after the rule after 

that we did this assessment to determine the first phase of the rule and that why we feel it is crucial that 

beef feeders in cattle.

Certainly feel that there is more significant gaps exist at this point of time and that need to be addressed 

and get to the conclusion of them within the traceability regulations. And you have to consider I think 

we always used there are other animals that are more of a disease risk and if we go back and look at 

that Slaughter there were 20 tuberculosis cases in the feeder cattle and they're not isolated from the 

disease so they are important to implement on that program. 

And I think we've heard a lot in recent days about the trade implications and our curfew is that animal 

disease traceability what the rule was set up to cover traits to benefit for a fully functional traceability 

system that is important to distinguish between the two and understand that there are rules. 

Neil also went through that the requirement for question and ID for Slaughter and then we went 

through what the requirement have in place for and so all ID not just official ID the back tags included 

must be collected at Slaughter true final disposition. 

What would we find there's number of reasons that that happens one we hear a, saying that it's hard to 

collect all the ID to the Commerce even if it's just a tag location of the bag tag you have to slow down 

the line and collect that bag tag. So that's a common thing I hear with a procedural issues what how that 

tag is or how those tags were collected properly and it's a lack of Education through not only the 

personnel and so one that it is important for us to have it in the concept educating. 

As part of the assessment we looked at some of those data parameters we also started conference calls 

with state animal health officials and federal personnel as well we had about 12 different conference 

calls to get feedback and how to they're working how they are in the field. 

We also charged federal counter works with going back to the local communities and having this 

conversation so that local Outreach is really important to make sure we get feedback from many 

industry participants as possible. So here we are at the state Regional holder meeting and as we 

mentioned we are anticipating we have anticipated details for a couple of additional meetings that this 

is really important for us to be here today and hear your comments how ADT is working and help you 
find the gaps and how does traceability work and its application for you that's very important to hear 

about. 

We also initiated of State Federal working group that that take information from these Regional 

meetings and kind of condense it and let us know what the key factors were that word consensus 

differences of opinion and they're going to generate an assessment rule from what we find in here for 

the national ADT that will take place this fall. 

So our goals for today as we all talked about is we want to hear your feedback we know what we say but 

we need to hear what you think, it is really important to speak up today and see how this is working for 

all of you. I want to hear about the gaps of traceability, what's working well, and where you think that 

we could make tweaks to the system, and can benefit the system in moving traceability. 

So thank you all for your attendance today Neil and I will take questions that you might have.