July 17, 2018
Kansas Announces Cattle Trace Pilot Program for Disease Traceability
Governor Jeff Colyer and Secretary Jackie McClaskey joined leaders from the Kansas beef industry and Kansas State University on Saturday, June 30, at Barton County Feeders in Ellinwood to announce the Cattle Trace pilot project. Cattle Trace is a public-private partnership which will develop and test a cattle disease traceability infrastructure in Kansas that will guide discussion and development of traceability on a national scale.
In early 2018, the Cattle Trace collaborators began working to develop a purpose-built infrastructure to track cattle movement through the supply chain. Cattle Trace will utilize ultra-high frequency technologies to collect the minimal data necessary, including an individual animal identification number, a GPS location, and date and time, in order to track animals in the event of a disease outbreak. Tag readers will be located at livestock markets, feed yards and beef processors. Movement data collection will begin in fall 2018, and the project will continue for approximately two years.
“We know for a traceability system to be effective, it needs to be simple, fast, and affordable to make its adoption within the industry as seamless as possible,” said Brad White, director of the Beef Cattle Institute at Kansas State University. “We are working to build a system to test today and one that will serve the U.S. beef cattle industry in the future.”
Cattle Trace is a collaborative partnership between Kansas State University, the Kansas Livestock Association, the Kansas Department of Agriculture, USDA, and individual producer stakeholders. It is being jointly funded by public and private resources.
For more information about the Cattle Trace project, go to www.cattletrace.org or contact the program coordinator, Cassie Kniebel, at ckniebel@vet.k-state.edu or 785-564-7446.