12 NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN November 2024 PERSPECTIVES TRACEABILITY MOVING FORWARD JESSIE TOPP BECKER, NEBRASKA CATTLEMAN MANAGING EDITOR Most beef cattle producers in the United States are familiar with the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) traceability rule, which went into effect in 2013. Under that rule, sexually intact cattle 18 months or older, rodeo and exhibition cattle, and dairy cattle moving interstate are required to have an official form of animal identification. Previously, those forms of identification included an 840 tag, metal bangs clip tags and, in some instances, breed tattoos if accompanied by a certificate of veterinary inspection. USDA’s final traceability rule, which goes into effect Nov. 5, updates the existing requirement of animal identification to the use of only electronic identification (EID) tags. “Over the last few years, USDA has continued to evolve this concept of transitioning the use of metal ear tags to a tag that USDA is referring to as both visually and electronically readable,” said Ethan Lane, vice president of government affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA), on the Oct. 2, 2024, episode of NCBA’s Cattlemen to Cattlemen on YouTube. The final rule does not require producers to tag any other classes of cattle – feeder cattle are still excluded – it simply transitions the form of identification. “Electronic identification is certainly not new to our industry,” says Jared Walahoski, DVM, chairman of the Nebraska Cattlemen (NC) Animal Health and Nutrition Committee. “The recent changes to our national identification process are long overdue, and do not add any additional requirements for the movement of beef cattle that were not already in place. “Utilization of electronic tags instead of the metal clips will minimize the stress on animals to comply with interstate transport requirements and can greatly enhance the speed with which these animals can be tracked in a disease investigation,” adds Walahoski, who is also a practicing veterinarian at Overton Veterinary Services in Lexington. “An EID tag is not going to prevent a disease outbreak from occurring, but what it will do is help us respond so much quicker and [more] accurately in a disease event,” says Callahan Grund, U.S. CattleTrace executive director. With the growing use of technology in all aspects of daily life, concerns related to privacy and data security are more prevalent. One of the biggest concerns with the transition to EID tags as required under the updated rule is data security. “This rule does not create the ability for USDA to aggregate information on your larger farm and ranch operations. It does not give them the ability to ascertain emissions data or build some kind of a database to use for other purposes,” Lane said. “This is basically a new way of transferring the same information animal health officials are already using to monitor that class of cattle intact over 18 months moving interstate as well as rodeo cattle, show cattle and bison when they’re moving throughout the supply chain.” In addition to transitioning the form of identification, the final rule also clarifies that cattle born in a dairy environment, regardless of breed, must be treated as dairy cattle in the 2013 rule.
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