ADVANCING ANIMAL DISEASE TRACEABILITY 

ROAD MAP FOR 

UTAH 2022 

A Three-Year Plan 

Submitted by: 

Dean J Taylor, DVM 

STATE VETERINARIAN 

UTAH DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE AND FOOD 

4315 S 2700 W, Taylorsville, Utah, 84129 

801-982-2200 

Submitted to: 

David J Hsi, DVM 

AREA VETERINARIAN-IN-CHARGE, UTAH 

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 

ANIMAL AND PLANT HEALTH INSPECTION SERVICE 

VETERINARY SERVICES 

SURVEILLANCE, PREPAREDNESS, AND RESPONSE SERVICES 

176 N 2200 SUITE 230, SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH 84116 

801-524-5010 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 

The Animal Health Program in the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food (UDAF) has 

continued its work in animal disease traceability to improve animal disease detection, 

reduce transcription errors, increase adoption of electronic identification, and reduce 

data entry requirements. In the past three years, UDAF has required radio frequency 

identification (RFID) tags in all bulls tested for trichomoniasis, provided RFID tags to 

producers, installed USALIMS at the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory, provided 

training on mobile apps for disease testing and animal movement for veterinarians and 

brand inspectors, and is in the process of purchasing RFID readers for elk facilities, brand 

inspectors, auction veterinarians, and cooperative extension agents. UDAF has 

completed traces for multiple species involved in disease outbreaks as well as successfully 

completed all Traceability Performance Measures for USDA. 

UDAF continues to use USAHerds for animal disease traceability. UDAF staff are members 

of the Committee for Vendor Oversight and the Technical Committee for USAHerds. UDAF 

supported the installation of USALIMS at the Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory (UVDL) 

to improve communication of animal identification on laboratory reports and allow for 

more rapid response to disease detections. UDAF has developed an electronic brand 

inspection program that links with USAHerds to better correlate brand inspections with 

CVIs. In addition, UDAF continues to upgrade USAHerds capabilities, including the 

development of no-cost electronic CVIs and electronic test and vaccination charts. 

II. CURRENT TRACEABILITY SITUATION 

2.1 Who are we? 

The Animal Health Program (Program) in the Utah Department of Agriculture and 

Food’s (Department) Animal Industry Division (Division) has the responsibility to

implement animal disease traceability systems for the State of Utah. Our jurisdiction 

includes the boundaries of the State of Utah excluding the tribal lands of the Ute, 

Navajo, Goshute, and Piute nations. Utah’s livestock and poultry producers, horse

owners, and veterinarians in the State of Utah are our primary constituents. 

All traceability data is used internally by the Program to aid in disease investigations. 

Data is shared with USDA APHIS Veterinary Services as needed. 

2.2 Where are we now? 

Currently, the animal disease traceability system in Utah has seen a significant 

increase in both import and export electronic Certificates of Veterinary Inspection 

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(eCVI). USAHerds has the capability to capture most electronically generated data 

through the XML format or other recognized schema. 

UDAF staff send paper export CVIs to the states of 

destination electronically and have set up a special e-mail 

address to receive electronic import CVIs from other states. 

UDAF uses USAHerds to issue premises IDs and 

uses the Data Management Center (DMC) to 

obtain premises IDs when USAHERDS cannot 

verify/validate addresses. Utah has ADT code and 

rules in place. Title 4 Chapter 31 Section 118 gives 

UDAF authority to make state rules to be 

compliant with federal ADT rules. It also gives 

UDAF the authority to enforce ADT rules, which 

can be found in Utah Administrative Code R58-1-

3. 

The primary goals of Utah’s animal traceability system are:

• Ensuring the privacy of data collected 

• Collecting information that is accurate and free from duplication 

• Ability to rapidly update information 

• User-friendly information extraction 

• Increasing the electronic transfer of data into USAHerds 

2.3 Strengths and Weaknesses 

a. Strengths: 

• We have a large number of premises IDs issued in USAHerds. Many of these 

premises also have associated federal premises IDs. 

• USAHerds Animal Dashboard Search allows rapid traceability. Searches of 

full or partial identification numbers pull data from import and export CVIs, 

test charts, accession data, and vaccination charts. 

• The Domestic Elk Program maintains detailed inventories of all licensed elk 

facilities. A recent USDA grant is allowing the program to provide RFID tag 

readers to all facilities to improve the accuracy of reports such as death 

reports, calf reports, and animal movement. 

• All bulls in Utah over twelve months of age must be tested for trichomoniasis 

annually. State law now requires an RFID tag be placed in every bull at the 

time of testing. 

• UVDL recently installed USALIMS, which is set up to automatically send 

accession data, including animal identification numbers, directly to 

USAHerds. USALIMS has a Vet Portal for veterinarians to upload owner and 

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animal identification information to the lab. This reduces data entry 

requirements and transcription errors at the laboratory and at UDAF. 

• The Animal Health Program has a close relationship with the Brand Inspection 

Program, and relies heavily on brand inspectors to enforce ADT, import, and 

state animal health laws. Brand inspectors are being trained on how to use 

RFID readers and mobile applications to improve animal traceability, 

especially for domestic elk. 

b. Weaknesses: 

• Long term funding: Utah is relying nearly100% on federal funding to run our 

ADT program. 

• Compliance with scrapie tagging regulations at auctions and private sales: 

Our producers and auctions are frequently found to be non-compliant with 

federal scrapie regulations for animal identification. 

• Classification of Premises Data: Many premises are not properly classified 

as to the type of facility, and many premises do not have species types 

assigned to them. This would make it difficult during an outbreak to 

determine which premises may need surveillance testing. 

• Premises Addresses: There are several premises that are associated only 

with a PO box and not a physical address. In addition, some parts of the 

state re-classified addresses, and hundreds to thousands of premises are 

not associated with their new physical addresses. Because of staff turnover 

and training, there are some duplicate premises found in USAHerds, which 

could impair the ability to associate test results with the correct premises. 

• Test, vaccination charts and many CVIs are still received on paper forms, 

requiring manual data entry into USAHerds. This increases the risk of 

transcription errors. 

2.4 Inventory of existing infrastructure and suitability assessment 

The Animal Industry Division has five components: 

• Meat and Poultry Inspection Program 

• Livestock Identification Bureau 

• Animal Health Program 

• Domesticated Elk Program 

• Utah Veterinary Diagnostic Laboratory 

III.VISION AND MISSION CONTEXT FOR ADVANCING TRACEABILITY 

3.1 Vision Statement 

The Animal Health Program in the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food is 

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committed to meeting and exceeding federal animal disease traceability 

requirements. 

3.2 Mission Statement 

The Utah Department of Agriculture and Food’s current mission statement is: 

Promote the healthy growth of Utah agriculture, conserve our natural resources 

and protect our food supply. 

IV.TRACEABILITY REQUIREMENTS 

4.1 Overall Strategic Goal 

Build on our State-wide infrastructure for advancing animal disease traceability 

compatible with State, Tribal, and USDA standards. 

4.2 Programmatic goals 

a. Advance the electronic sharing of data among federal and state animal health 

officials, veterinarians and industry; including sharing basic ADT data with the 

federal animal health events repository (AHER). 

b. Increase adoption of RFID tags for animals requiring individual identification, 

especially beef cattle, in order to make the transmission of data more efficient. 

c. Enhance the ability to track animals from birth to slaughter through a system 

that allows tracking data points to be connected. 

4.3 Animal disease traceability performance measures 

a. Objective 1: Increase electronic sharing of data via eCVIs, brand inspections, 

test and vaccination charts, laboratory accessions, and elk event 

reports. This will be accomplished through: 

• Providing no-cost eCVIs and test and vaccination charts to veterinarians 

through USAHerds and the VetCVI mobile app. 

• Providing education to veterinarians and elk producers on the use of RFID 

tag readers and mobile apps for chute-side data collection. 

• Providing education to veterinarians and elk producers on the use of the 

USALIMS Vet Portal. 

• Providing RFID tag readers to elk producers and conducting annual 

physical inventories. 

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• Creating a link between the electronic brand inspection program and 

USAHerds to allow monitoring of animal movements into, out of, and 

within Utah. 

b. Objective 2: Improve usability of premises data through proper classifications, 

addition of species types, geographic coordinates, and elimination of 

duplicate premises as well as coordination with premises data in EMRS and 

AHER. Work with the brands program to identify physical addresses for 

premises with PO boxes. 

c. Objective 3: Increase the review of import and export CVIs and vaccination and 

test charts for compliance with ADT requirements. Provide letters to 

veterinarians who do not comply with ADT requirements. 

d. Objective 4: Build a robust geospatial information system (GIS) within the 

Animal Health Program and other Programs within the Animal Industry Division 

to further our ability to geocode and map our premises for use with interactive 

mapping for disease traceability and response to possible outbreaks. 

• Coordinate assets and capabilities with the Utah Department of Agriculture 

and Food’s GIS Coordinator to provide geocoding and mapping to our ranch 

and farm premises in Utah. 

• Provide training to key personnel in the Animal Health Program and our 

other Programs to learn to build and manipulate interactive mapping for our 

elk, cattle, swine, sheep, goats and poultry populations within Utah. 

• Provide training to key personnel within the Animal Industry Division to 

build story maps and interactive maps for tracking and publishing disease 

event information and updates on our website. 

e. Objective 5: Increase adoption of RFIDs in beef cattle through education of 

producers and veterinarians and coordination with the Utah State Cooperative 

Extension. 

4.4 Data requirements 

a. Fully describe standards to be used for location identification, if used: 

The standards used are those which were created by the USDA under the NAIS 

system and will not change in the near future. 

b. Fully describe standards to be used for official animal identification, including 

arrangements with other States, Tribes, Territories, as well as official 

identification methods/devices used within the cooperator’s jurisdiction: 

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Utah has developed Memorandums of Understanding with 5 other states 

(Idaho, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, and Wyoming) to allow the importation 

of officially identified animals with a brand inspection as long as the animals are 

moving from the farm of origin and have only 1 brand. 

Utah will allow the distribution of RFID tags direct to producers who sign an 

agreement to keep records for 5 years. We are currently tracking RFID tags sent 

to accredited veterinarians and individual producers in USAHERDS. 

c. What tag distribution record keeping systems will be used? 

USAHERDS tracks tags that are distributed as well as recording events such as 

brucellosis vaccination or animal movements where those tags are applied to 

animals. 

d. What data requirements exist for commuter herd agreements? 

• Address and GPS coordinates of origin and destination. 

• Contact information for origin and destination. 

• Brucellosis vaccination status of cattle in herd. 

• Negative trichomoniasis test results for all bulls. 

• Brucellosis test results for cattle that grazed in the Brucellosis Designated 

Surveillance Area the previous year. 

e. What forms are approved for interstate movement in addition to CVIs? 

• NPIP 9-3 forms. 

• Owner / Shipper Statement to be used in appropriate situations. 

• Electronic interstate swine movement reports will be used to import swine 

from Idaho and Colorado through a coordinated swine production health 

plan. 

f. How and when will data be shared with other States, Tribes, Territories, and 

USDA? 

• CVIs generated in Utah will be sent electronically to destination states 

weekly. 

• The USDA Animal Identification Coordinator has access to premises and test 

and vaccination data in USAHerds. 

• USAHerds is working with USDA to transfer data into AHER. 

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4.5 Information technology plan 

UDAF is utilizing USAHERDS with servers hosted by Acclaim Systems. Electronic CVIs 

can be imported into USAHERDS through the XML or other schema. Paper CVIs are 

currently being transcribed into USAHERDS. Brucellosis and TB reports are being 

transcribed into USAHERDS. Test results for reportable diseases are automatically 

downloaded into USAHERDS from UVDL through USALIMS. 

4.6 Resource requirements 

• Staff for data entry 

• Funds for USAHERDS hosting and maintenance. 

• RFID readers for stakeholders 

4.7 Organizational needs 

a. Executive Support 

The current administration of UDAF realize that an animal disease traceability 

system will benefit the livestock and poultry industries of Utah as long as it does 

not adversely affect the producers’ ability to make a profit.

b. Coordination and Oversight Procedures 

The Animal Health Program will coordinate and oversee any animal disease 

traceability system in the State of Utah. 

c. Policy 

Rules are in place for animal disease traceability standards for interstate 

movement. 

d. Staffing 

Several staff are trained on data entry in USAHerds, but the bulk of the data 

entry is performed by an Office Specialist, the Domestic Elk Program manager, 

and the Assistant State Veterinarian. The need for additional data entry 

personnel will continually be evaluated. 

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e. Budget Requirements 

The UDAF Animal Health Program will need funding through cooperative 

agreements for data entry personnel and maintenance agreements. UDAF also 

plans to purchase the new version of USAHerds due in 2022. 

f. Outreach 

Continuing education will be provided to accredited veterinarians in the area of 

ADT, proper submission of CVIs, electronic health certificates and software, 

RFID, and equipment to record and submit data in electronic formats. 

Outreach to livestock and market owners concerning ADT will continue at 

various producer meetings and private visits. 

g. Monitoring and Reporting Interstate Movement Activity 

All CVIs will be monitored as they are received by the Division for completeness 

and accuracy. The veterinarian, the USDA AVIC, and the state of 

origin/destination will receive a letter listing those errors found. 

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