Allan Barber: Farm-to-shop tracking long overdue

The foot-and-mouth disease scare on Waiheke Island, mindless as the author of the hoax letter was, gave New Zealand a very timely wake-up call.

The need for a comprehensive, robust method of animal identification has been deferred for a number of years, because no industry body has had the courage to pick the issue up and develop a solution.

There is now finally a livestock industry working group, under the chairmanship of Jeff Grant, Meat and Wool New Zealand's chairman, which is about to put out a consultation paper on the subject to all interested parties.

This process will take several months to work through, but the end result should be an agreement to introduce a system that meets not just the current needs for purposes of TB control, dairy industry production values and farm database recording, but also satisfies a range of other requirements.

The desire of New Zealand's trading partners for traceability of animals back to the farm, herd or flock of origin is not yet mandatory, but it doesn't take too much imagination to see the time when this will be just another requirement of maintaining our global relationships.

Even if the overseas authorities don't insist, the customers almost certainly will - European consumers will expect to know that the lamb they buy at the supermarket has been raised and processed according to a strict quality regime. Proof of origin will be part of that system.

The nightmare of an outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease or a case of BSE (mad-cow disease) suddenly came much closer to reality last month.

Despite the thoroughness of the bio-security disease control measures that MAF put in place on Waiheke and the conclusion that there was no foot-and-mouth after all, the lack of a comprehensive animal ID system represented a major loophole in the system.

For example, all consignments of livestock leaving the farm must be accompanied by an Animal Status Declaration, while the present system of animal ID, operated by the Animal Health Board under the Bio-security Act, does not require cattle to be tagged under 30 days of age, unless they are being sent for slaughter as bobby calves. Only then do they need to be tagged at an earlier age.

It is quite possible for feeder calves less than 30 days old to be sold without tags anywhere in the country.

By then it is impossible to trace the calves back to their farm of birth, an absolutely essential method of controlling the spread of disease.

Sheep and lambs are not required to be tagged at all, because they do not pose a TB risk. The industry working group does not propose to recommend individual identification for sheep and lambs, believing it to be sufficient to be able to trace them back to the farm of origin, but I have no doubt that technology will within a short time provide an economic means of identifying each animal. Then it will become mandatory.

The reluctance to take the lead on this question has been more about the potential cost to sheep and beef farmers than any more strategic consideration. After all, dairy farmers have had to tag their calves with a Livestock Improvement ear tag, which does double duty - it not only complies with the TB control legal requirement, but it enables every dairy cow's breeding value, parentage and production values to be downloaded from the paddock directly to a database.

When the whole industry including sheep and beef farmers has a universal web-based system that improves their productivity in the same way, then New Zealand's agricultural sector really will be leading the world. There should be no more delays.

* Allan Barber is a freelance writer, business consultant and former chief operating officer at Affco.