Kansas Takes the Lead On Disease

Traceability

By: Mary Soukup, CattleTrace Industry Advisory Committee

The year is 1999. Most households had a landline telephone. Some had the ability to connect to the Internet using a dial-up infrastructure. Many did not. Cellular telephones were for emergencies only, and you needed a bag to carry them in. Amazon.com was a toddler – just a four-year-old company. Google Inc. was still in diapers – having been founded the year prior. The United States was a global leader in the beef industry, but it did not have an end-to-end disease traceability system in the cattle industry.

Fast forward 20 years. Landline telephones in the home are a thing of the past. They have been replaced by high-powered smartphones that not only connect individuals through voice conversations but also connect them to high-speed Internet. Amazon.com is largest Internet company by revenue in the world. Google Inc. is one of the most-visited websites in the world. By the time most pour their first cup of coffee, they’ve likely visited one, if not both, of these sites to find information and purchase daily necessities. The technology revolution of the past 20 years has changed the world as we know it. And while the United States still lacks an end-to-end disease traceability system in the cattle industry, an initiative, called CattleTrace, is underway in Kansas to embrace cutting-edge technology and develop a purpose-built disease traceability infrastructure that works for and in the beef cattle industry.

An Industry Driven Initiative

During 2016 and 2017 multiple actions related to disease traceability sent a strong signal that Kansas producers were ready to act. First, producers and industry partners identified cattle disease traceability as a top priority in the Kansas Strategic Agriculture Growth Initiative. Second, in December 2017, the Kansas Livestock Association amended its policy to support a mandatory cattle disease traceability system for all cattle. These actions were the driving forces that brought KDA, KLA, Kansas State University, USDA and individual producers together early in 2018 to begin developing plans for the pilot project.

According to Cassie Kniebel, CattleTrace program manager, CattleTrace is focused on developing and testing a disease traceability infrastructure that can be expanded nationwide. The project is designed to be a two-year, $1.5 million pilot with funding coming equally from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the State of Kansas, and private industry.

“One of the unique things about the beef industry in Kansas is that we have the supply chain right here. From cow-calf producers to beef processors and every step between, we have the ability to develop and test a disease traceability infrastructure that traces the cattle movement through each step of the process. And the time is right too. Producers have become more comfortable using technology in their everyday and on their operations.”

The objectives of CattleTrace include the following: (1) Develop a purpose-built infrastructure for an animal disease traceability system; (2) Evaluate the efficiency and capabilities of the animal disease traceability system and infrastructure; and (3) Determine the value of an animal disease traceability system throughout the supply chain. Kniebel says as the group developed the CattleTrace protocol, there has been a focus on ensuring producer privacy and data se- curity, developing a system that operates at the speed of commerce, and collecting the minimal data necessary for disease traceability.

Developing the Infrastructure

At its core, animal disease traceability is knowing where diseased and at-risk animals are, where they have been, and when they were at those locations. The CattleTrace infrastructure is being designed to answer those questions by tracing animal movements at the speed of commerce through critical points in the supply chain, including at livestock markets, feedyards and beef processors, and maintaining that data in a secure, third-party database.

Kniebel says producer privacy and data security are top priorities for cattle producers and have been a guiding principle in the development of CattleTrace. “Our solution was to formally establish CattleTrace, Inc., as a 501(c)(3) company to own the database, which will protect the data from Open Record Act or Freedom of Information Act requests for information,” Kniebel explained. “In addition, a CattleTrace, Inc., Board of Directors was named to establish policy that determines who can access the database, how it is accessed, and what disease situations trigger access.”

Another important component of a disease traceability infrastructure is the actual identification tag and the reader network. CattleTrace is utilizing ultra-high frequency RFID tags and reader systems. Brandon Depenbusch, chairman of the CattleTrace, Inc. board of directors, says the novelty of the ultra-high frequency technology is its ability to capture movement data as calves move naturally through the supply chain. “Just as the reader systems on the turnpike can read the K-Tag in your windshield as you maintain your speed, the readers we are using for CattleTrace are able to capture sightings as calves move naturally through pens and alley ways,” he says.

To date, readers have been installed at 8 auction markets and 14 feedyards. Depenbusch says the final readers to be installed will be those at the processors, noting that all three of the major processors in Kansas are participating. While tag readers will not be installed at cow-calf operations, he says more than 50 cow-calf producers are participating to date and that they are over halfway to the goal of tagging 55,000 Kansas-based calves. As of February 1, 2019, just over 36,000 tags have been distributed.

As previously mentioned, a guiding principle is to collect minimal data necessary for disease traceability. The CattleTrace team believes they will be able achieve that by only collecting four data points, including the individual animal ID number, GPS location of the reader, date and time. As animals are sighted and those data points are collected, they will be sent to the secure, third-party CattleTrace database.

Testing the Infrastructure

The first year of CattleTrace was focused almost entirely on the first objective. Kniebel says CattleTrace is now moving into the second-phase and shifting focus more on the second objective. There are now more than 15,000 individual sightings in the CattleTrace database, and of those between 4,000 and 5,000 calves have been sighted more than once.

“As we continue capturing more sightings this spring and summer, we will conduct mock tracebacks to evaluate the capabilities of the system. We will be asking key questions like Did we capture the right data? Can we trace movement at the individual animal level back to the farm or ranch of origin? Are we able to identify cohorts of “diseased” or “at risk” animals at various points in the supply chain? How long does it take to conduct a trace? Are our protocols for access adequate? Answering these questions and others through mock tracebacks will enable us to make necessary adjustments and tweaks to the infrastructure to improve it for the entire industry,” Kniebel explains.

Evaluating the Value

The third and final objective is to evaluate the economics of the CattleTrace. Kniebel says CattleTrace is partnering with Kansas State University to evaluate both the costs and benefits of disease traceability at the individual producer level as well as at the overall industry level.

From Pilot or Practice

While CattleTrace began in Kansas, the beef industry across the nation is watching what we are doing very closely. Depenbusch says CattleTrace “is becoming contagious.” He notes that as of February 1, 11 states are in discussion with CattleTrace, exploring different opportunities for potential partnership. Whether in Kansas or not, Depenbusch says there is still a need for producers to partner in the project. To learn more about the pilot or ways to participate, he encourages producers to visit www.CattleTrace.org or follow CattleTrace on Facebook or Twitter.

Depenbusch says the interest from producers across the country is very encouraging. “Disease traceability is a top priority here in Kansas and across the nation. The United States is one of just two major beef producing nations around the globe that does not have a national end-to-end disease traceability system,” he says. “The major distinction between what we’re doing with CattleTrace and systems around the globe – they were all implemented after a major disease situation. We have the opportunity to develop and test a system on our terms. This is our chance to get it right – to take advantage of new technologies and embrace an opportunity to make lasting and positive change in our industry here at home and in the entire United States beef cattle industry.”