At the Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Convention, Senior Farm and Ranch Broadcaster Ron Hays talked with Callahan Grund, the Executive Director of U.S. CattleTrace. Hays is back talking with Grund today about animal identification at the speed of commerce.
To listen to Part One of the conversation, CLICK HERE.
“I think there is technology available and out there today that allows us to reach that speed of commerce, but it is connecting the dots,” Callahan said. “Obviously, as we know with many different items in the cattle industry, connecting the dots may be the hardest thing we do because we are so segmented. It is the beautiful part of our industry, but it makes it a challenge on issues like this.”
Grund said the achievability of the speed of commerce in a traceability system is rapidly progressing. With the progression of technology, Grund said reaching the speed of commerce is very obtainable.
“I think we are at a fork in the road, because we have tried this for about 20 to 25 years,” Grund said. “We can only cuss and discuss items for so long before we start either looking for solutions or saying, ‘we are just going to sit back and wait for this thing to come, then we will deal with it when it comes.’”
When looking at traceability and the current classes of cattle covered by the government, Grund said it would not take much for the government to mandate a system for feeder cattle as well.
“We are against mandates at U.S. CattleTrace, but we are for providing solutions,” Grund said. “I think we have an opportunity to be proactive hopefully and go down that other fork in the road, build a system that works for us as producers before anything would come so we can say, ‘hey government, we have got it taken care of on this voluntary animal disease traceability side of things.’”
Grund said U.S. CattleTrace has taken the necessary precautions to ensure that producers’ data remains private.
“We don’t have any individual producer data,” Grund said. “It is just the ID, date, time, and GPS coordinates, so where that animal may have been read at that instance, no personally identifiable information there, and the database is locked up and secured only to use in the case of a disease outbreak.”
CattleTrace partner organizations include the Oklahoma Cattlemen’s Association, the Kansas Livestock Association, Florida Cattlemen’s Association, Texas Cattle Feeders Association, Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association and Kentucky Cattlemen’s Association. To see the full list of CattleTrace partners, CLICK HERE.
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