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Source, age verification important part of BVS programBy John Schlageck Kansas Farm Bureau Maintaining complete and accurate records of their livestock has been a practice farmers and ranchers have always aspired to do. Knowing a cow's lineage, age and production output is something every good cattleman strives to keep track of. That said, what is new, different or necessary about some of the identification programs that have surfaced during the last couple years? Some of these new identification programs, including Beef Verification Solution, allow an individual producer to track his/her cattle from the cows to the calves to the processing plant. As the marketplace continues to demand exact animal traceability to satisfy consumer demands, producers who have enrolled in a Kansas Farm Bureau program like Beef Verification Solution will be positioned to cash in on these market opportunities. Today, the beef cattle market is much more fluid than it was say five or 10 years ago, Mark Nelson, Kansas Farm Bureau Commodities Director says. livestock are moving farther and faster in this country. "The main reason for traceability or an animal identification program is to know exactly where each and every animal comes from," Nelson says. As an example, Kansas cattle herds may be brucellosis-free, however cattlemen in this state continue to bring livestock in from other places. There is a need to know where an animal comes from. Just over three short years ago, the United States recorded its first ever Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy case. The Japanese and other Asian markets closed their doors to U.S. beef. In order to reopen those markets, the U.S. beef industry had to devise a way to ensure all beef sold to those countries was from animals that met specific age requirements at the time they were processed. Consumers, who with each passing generation, become further removed from the farm that provides them with the food they eat, are also driving traceability and animal identification. As these consumers become more detached from the farm, they've grown to look for and buy "brand name" products including food that often implies greater quality, safety and taste. So a producer has the birth dates of each head written down in a herd book, and the cattle are ear tagged with the radio-frequency identification tags. He has all he needs for source and age verification, right? That is partially correct, but there's more to this story. Since BSE , not only must a livestock producer have impeccable records on source and age, he/she must also be part of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's export-verification program or EV. This export-verification program calls for all USDA-marketed beef to Japan to also be part of a quality-system assessment (QSA) or process-verified program (PVP). Both the quality-system assessment and the process-verified program provide the cattle industry with one set of uniform rules and one independent auditor to ensure compliance and accuracy. This means that as a livestock producer, if you're not a part of a USDA quality-system assessment or a process-verified program, your cattle aren't considered source and age verified - regardless if you've written down birth dates or not. For any producer thinking about selling source and age verification, the first step is to enroll in a USDA-approved program like the AgInfoLink process-verified program available through the Beef Verification Solution program. Such a program allows livestock producers to retain marketing flexibility. With an independent, process-verified program, cattlemen can sell to more than one packer, feedlot or sale barn. This puts more bargaining power in the producers' hands and provides them with the ability to sell source and age information they've collected at their ranch. Such a system also provides confidentiality for the individual cow/calf producer. AgInfoLink eliminates the need for additional audits of livestock thus preventing others from accessing records and animal information. John Schlageck is a leading commentator on agriculture and rural Kansas. Born and raised on a diversified farm in northwestern Kansas, his writing reflects a lifetime of experience, knowledge and passion. 0 None None Date: 4/23/07
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