What's Driving ID?
By Sharla Ishmael

Eddie -- a Limousin bull calf -- is the first of millions of cattle that will be tracked throughout his life by the British Cattle Movement Service. As required by law, Eddie has been tagged in both ears, has a passport and is logged on the BCMS database.

Great Britain is part of the global movement towards individual identification and tracking of livestock in the aftermath of BSE. Italy has "smart card" technology that permits consumers to check the background of a farm animal before they buy a cut of meat. A French supermarket provides consumers the ability to access information on the animal as well as a photo of the producer. In fact, in the European Union, starting Jan. 1, 2000, all livestock must be tagged with one ID tag in each ear within 20 days after birth.

Australia has the National Livestock Identification Scheme, a voluntary program being introduced on a state-by-state basis with government funding. The Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, charged with developing and implementing a national system of individual ID and traceback, looks to Dec. 31, 2000, as the target date for becoming a mandatory program.

Argentina also has a National Task Force on Identification looking at that country's ID needs in the global marketplace and the Confederacion Nacional Ganadera de Mexico (CNG) is working with an American company that facilitates the adoption of individual animal ID.*

Add individual ID to your list of beef business buzzwords. Strategic partnerships announced almost weekly among state cattle associations, animal health companies, technology applicators, auction markets and others guarantee you'll be hearing more about it.

"To some people it's (individual ID) irrelevant; that would be the guy who's not going to make any changes or who doesn't consider feedback a priority in his program," says Dr. John McNeill, associate department head and program leader for the animal science division of the Texas Agricultural Extension Service.

But for those producers really trying to go to the next step in production efficiency, he believes getting beyond a herd average is important. "You start looking at individuals that influence (the average) either positively or negatively, that's when individual identification becomes important," McNeill explains. "If you can identify them and either propagate them or get rid of them, then you can move that average. Otherwise, you're assuming every animal in the group is 'average,' but probably only one steer in the whole group is 'average.' The rest fall on either side of him."

Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association, whose banner has long hung on cattle identification for theft recovery, takes it seriously. In June, TSCRA adopted policy in support of a voluntary animal identification program provided that it's practical, cost-effective, protects ranchers from undue liability and is managed by the association.

As well, TSCRA's leadership asked for a business plan defining the association's role in up-and-coming identification programs because "either through voluntary evolution or mandatory requirement, individual animal identification systems will proliferate in the United States and Texas."

Individual is the key.

Individual animal identification -- assigning each calf a unique and lifelong number -- promises real opportunity to the forward-thinking producer who's serious about meeting the needs of the consumer each and every time. It could also bolster consumer confidence in product quality and safety.

Drivers

Really, three factors drive growing interest in individual animal ID: 1) the need for more effective management through information sharing, 2) consumer confidence in beef safety worldwide and 3) desire to ensure the integrity of the U.S. animal health system.

Whether it's a nationwide identification program that would ideally allow even the smallest producer to follow his cattle all the way to the packer, or a closed-loop arrangement that begins and ends within a particular operation, individual ID puts the power of information at ranchers' fingertips. That is the kind of information currently hidden in averages and a segmented industry where information generally doesn't flow easily if at all.

Of course, the very idea of individual ID provokes a truckload of yet-to-be-answered questions grounded in both practicality and fear of the unknown. Would a hot-iron brand still be necessary? Will the cow-calf producer bear the brunt of added costs? Does individual ID expose the rancher to food safety-related lawsuits? Does the industry need a national system of identification, and how would it work?

Performance vs. ownership

To start with, producers identify their cattle for two disparate reasons that should not be confused. Herd identification through branding, ear notching or other permanent methods helps ranchers establish ownership when cattle are stolen or stray. Unfortunately, cattle theft is still a problem. TSCRA Field Inspectors investigated 1,711 such cases in Texas and Oklahoma in 1998, recovering or accounting for 5,635 head of cattle.

Emotion and tradition aside, branding contributes to the estimated $24.30 per head loss in hide defects among fed cattle, according to the 1995 National Beef Quality Audit. But today it's still the most effective method of identifying range cattle on a herd basis. However, a ranch brand
doesn't give a producer the means to distinguish one heifer from another within his own herd.

Conversely, individual ID, whether it's unique to the herd or unique to the world, does not provide legal proof of ownership in most states. But that is not its purpose. The goal here is to match an animal with its parents, its own performance and the type of management the animal experienced. The time-worn cliché is true -- you can't manage what you can't measure.

More effective management

Dr. Bill Mies, Texas A&M University, demonstrated the simple logic of managing cattle as individuals rather than as groups at A&M's Beef Cattle Short Course in August.

"What's this heifer weigh?" Mies asks the crowd, eyeing a black heifer calf in the chute. The answers he got back ranged from 430 pounds to 650 pounds -- 642 was the right answer. But in a pen of just 10 black heifers, it's very possible to have animals weighing anywhere in that 220-pound range.

If you were boostering these heifers for BRD, would you give each heifer the same amount of vaccine, since dosage is based on weight? The same logic holds for many daily management chores, as well as the bigger picture of recording individual gains, health records, genetic composition and ultimately, carcass characteristics.

Why individual?

As well, it's not hard to see a relationship between management on the average and pricing on the average.

"We need to get away from selling cattle on averages," says Jimme Wilson, a rancher from Trout Creek, Mont., who is spearheading a voluntary, national ID system in the newly formed entity, USA Cattle Information Service (See Ideas for ID Systems, pg. 24). "It's like getting graded on the curve in school. To bring the bottom end up, you have to bring the top end down. You don't get the money your Choice cattle are worth by selling on the average.

"We hope to get a system in place that will give people incentive to raise a higher-quality product that will consistently eat better and help us regain market share."

Wilson estimates producers receive information back on only about 250,000 carcasses of the 40 million cattle graded by the government every year. As well, he says there can be as much as $200 difference in the value of a carcass, though most get paid on averages.

"That leaves a lot of money that's being played around with that's not getting back to the people that raised a superior product," he explains. "The only way you're going to be able to measure that is to individually ID these cattle."

But to take advantage of value differences, a producer will likely need a past history, not just one year's worth of feedback on a handful of calves.

"In the future, we really think reputation feeder cattle will have several years of feedlot and carcass data to back up their performance," says Kent Andersen of the North American Limousin Foundation, who sits on the governing board of USA Cattle Information Service. "If you have the information in a nationally recognized system, maybe you could use that to help sell your feeder calves for more value."

Losing information

Although some producers participating in state feedout programs or alliances can get individual feedback, the information can be lost through gaps in the system. Wilson explains how easily that can happen.

"Sending people in a packing plant with a clipboard to collect carcass data is not the way to do this," he says. "You send some people over on a Monday to collect data on 150 steers and it turns out they were killed two hours ago because two trucks that were supposed to be there at 8 a.m. weren't.

"So to keep the chain going, they bring in the next pens and unless those cattle are painted chartreuse or something, they are just cattle to the workers, who don't know what's going on," Wilson adds. "All the information and background and everything those cattle have gone through is down the tubes."

Without a solid identification system in place, it's also easy for cattle and carcasses to get mixed up, which becomes a concern not only for carcass data collection, but also for disease and residue monitoring and traceback.

Animal health issues

"Having been a Food Safety and Inspection Service vet for a few years, I know that animals do jump over the gate," says Dr. John Wiemers, now senior staff veterinarian with Veterinary Services, a division of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service. "In the absence of identification and records, it's up to the producer to prove they did not have an animal with a residue.

"Certainly if they trace an animal, and a producer has a record of placing that identification on a white-faced steer, and FDA says they have evidence the residue was from a Holstein heifer, they'll know they've got the wrong animal and owner," Wiemers explains.

Liability stemming from traceback, perhaps made easier through an individual ID system, is a prime concern for producers. But in this veterinarian's view, good record keeping on drugs used, routes of administration and the like, backed up with individual ID, protects the producer from government interference more than it increases their risk.

"I've had conversations with folks from FDA and they've said that's exactly what they want to see," Wiemers explains. "If they find a residue violation that's traced back to a ranch, and that producer can show with their records that they've never used that drug on the ranch, or they have records to show they've administered it properly, it will protect them."

Existing trace back

Many ranchers might not realize the level of traceback and testing that already exists in the industry. Wiemers explains that every test-eligible (cull cow or bull) animal that goes to slaughter is tested for brucellosis. Because cull cows are individually identified with unique back tags, he says they can already be traced back to the ranch.

As far as fed cattle, all bovine organs are visually and tactilely tested for tuberculosis at the slaughter facility. Plus, random carcasses are tested for violative residues. Even though most fed cattle are still identified by lot, if an inspector found evidence of TB, every effort would be made to trace that animal back to its point of origin where other members of that herd would be tested.

If a drug residue was found, the next time that owner sold cattle for slaughter, a certain number of their carcasses would have to be tested. If health officials still found residues, then they would go back to the ranch and try to determine what's happening. In other words, producers are already vulnerable to traceback if a problem shows up, and correct ID backed up by records can decrease the impact of a problem. (See More or less liability? pg. 12)

Investment in eradication

As many disease-eradication programs, like the brucellosis campaign, wind down, fewer calfhood vaccination tags and other forms of ID are utilized. This impacts the United States' tracking ability, which is important both to exports and disease containment.

"The industry and the government have invested a lot of time, money and resources in getting to where we are today," Wiemers says. "We are on the verge of eradicating these costly diseases. And right now, we need every piece of identification to identify all animals so we can find the ones that are infected and be able to tell our foreign trading partners that we are free of brucellosis and tuberculosis in our cattle.

"It's a win-win situation for producers in that they get rid of the disease so it's not affecting their animals, but they're also opening up markets for their products," he believes. "The government does not want to micromanage producers' affairs, but we're all involved in the production of food for the public. If we don't have a system in place soon, we are going to sacrifice our competitive edge with the rest of the world."

Wiemers is referring to the momentum in developing national livestock ID systems in 21 different countries in the world. In the aftermath of BSE and other food safety issues, consumers are asking for more source verification of their food products.

Exports and ID

"If we don't do individual identification in the next five years, say, I don't think that is necessarily going to affect the tonnage of beef exports so much," says Billy Lloyd of the U.S. Meat Export Federation, "but we are beginning to hear more and more interest from the trade in animal identification for the same reasons that consumers here are interested in it."

Lloyd says from a requirements standpoint, the only place it is likely to be an issue is the European Union, where the United States currently does not export beef. Apart from the EU's ban on beef deriving from cattle treated with growth-promoting hormones, the FSIS recently stopped signing export documents for beef headed to the EU after some U.S. products tested positive for such hormones.

Better tracking

A better tracking and documentation system is being worked out in the industry to address that particular problem -- including individual ID back to birth on some ranches interested in that market.

In 2000, the EU will require individual ID within its boundaries. Lloyd doesn't think U.S. producers will have to live up to that standard with trading partners like Japan and Korea any time soon. However, Australia is aggressively developing its own ID system, and on a tonnage basis, Australia would likely be this country's biggest competitor.

"I struggle with this sometimes, because I don't know that there is a lot of scientific information that says you have to have it," Lloyd admits. "But it's important from the perception of the consumer and the trade that we deal with in retail and providing each of these countries some level of comfort that you could identify an animal back to point of origin."

Does anybody doubt the importance of exports to the U.S. beef market? According to USMEF, U.S. beef exports (including variety meats) accounted for almost 12 percent of the wholesale value of total U.S. beef production at last count (See Figure 1). In 1997, the most recent data available from USMEF, beef exports added $77.16 per head to 

the value of fed cattle, $68.85 to feeder cattle and $53.80 to calves (See Figure 2).

"You talk to many of the alliances," Wilson adds, "and as much as 20 percent of their market is exports."

Hidden bonuses

On top of individual ID's value in management, consumer confidence and integrity of animal health programs, it could also facilitate product enhancement.

Dr. Bucky Gwartney, assistant director, science and technology at the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, manages research projects funded by the Cattlemen's Beef Board, which includes both beef safety and product enhancement. He says a hidden plus of an ID system is how it would facilitate the adoption of other technology in the works.

"We're looking at instrument grading and tenderness probes that are very promising, but we won't be able to use that information until we can track cattle," Gwartney explains. "We have to have a system that will work so we can transfer that information over and give feedback to the producer."

"We've invested a lot of checkoff dollars developing instrument grading and all types of things," Wilson says. "We need to position ourselves to capitalize on all we have participated in. We've got to position ourselves to raise reputation cattle and be able to show that the last two loads of cattle graded above average if we want to get paid for it.

"A lot of guys say, 'I know I'm not getting paid enough money for my cattle.' How do you know? What proof do you have? After you've run a few pens through, then you can demand a price," Wilson believes. "Otherwise, you're never going to get it."*