Allan Barber: Vital to get traceability project right first time

Cattle such as this one on the Bombay hills will be electronically tagged for traceability. Picture / Amos Chapple

There are two main requirements of the long-awaited project to implement a national traceability system for cattle and deer: Our overseas markets will demand a fail-safe system soon and it is critical to get it right the first time.

All major industry participants now seem to be talking the same language but, as usual, the devil is in the detail.

Farmers appear to be in favour, certainly dairy farmers and beef breeders; stock companies know it's inevitable; processors recognise the logic of having a common method of traceability, even if they were all originally going down different routes in an effort to ensure supplier loyalty; and, most important, retailers and food manufacturers are starting to demand it because their customers expect it.

New Zealand's concerns revolve around the cost of implementation, privacy matters - therefore ownership of the central data registry - the potential for an explosion of extra work and a fruit cocktail of eartags on cattle.

The industry working group tasked with implementing an animal identification and traceability system has been working away for the best part of 18 months. Group members represented all the main industry bodies - Federated Farmers, meat and wool, dairy, deer, food safety and biosecurity among them. During that time, it has produced an initial consultation document that has gone out to all relevant agricultural parties and received feedback.

Finally, the working group has prepared a project brief and advertised for a project manager to carry out the implementation programme for at least 12 and probably more like 24 months. It has also made some decisions in principle: Most important being that an electronic eartag will be the chosen method of achieving traceability for cattle and deer, similar to the system in Victoria.

The meat industry, in particular, has been wary of being dragged into an expensive piece of technology for which it couldn't recover the cost and didn't think its farmer suppliers would willingly accept.

But the big picture has changed enormously in the past couple of years. Meat companies have installed updated systems capable of reading a barcoded eartag and capturing the data throughout the production process; and systems exist to track the processed product to the point of sale, and even to where a consumer can enter the barcode into a screen and see from which farm the meat originated.

Livestock Improvement Corp (LIC) has for several years enabled its dairy farmer members to enter all relevant breeding data about individual cows into the MINDA system and beef breeders have also cottoned on to the benefits of recording the equivalent data about stud bulls, breeding herds and the progeny. So it's only a short step technically to introduce a means of seamlessly tracking an animal throughout its progress from pre-birth to the consumer's plate.

The main concerns now revolve around ownership of the animal data, the governance of the database and the amount of work involved in recording the data required for compliance with the mandatory elements of the system. The central database already largely exists, either in LIC's MINDA, AgriQuality's Agribase with coverage of all farm locations, ownership and herd details, and the Animal Health Board's TB tag registry.

The challenge will be for the working group to work with each of these organisations to identify what should be in the central database, which then will be ring-fenced for non-commercial ownership and governance. The price of electronic tags will be the only compulsory cost for farmers.

The prize for New Zealand will be considerable because our present reputation for high-quality produce will be underpinned by total proof of origin and traceability.

The next big question is when the system will be extended to apply to sheep; there are 40 million of them and only 11 million head of cattle and deer.

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