| PERSPECTIVE: |
ANIMAL TRACKING |
[February 27, 2004] –
When the first U.S. case of Mad Cow Disease or BSE was discovered last December in Washington, officials wanted to find every animal the diseased cow had been in contact with. They couldn't, because the U.S. doesn't have a comprehensive system for traceability. Although the U.S. case gave it a sense of urgency, Nebraska started seriously looking at traceability last summer after announcement of a Mad Cow case in Canada and a trade mission to Japan. Delegates discovered the Japanese, a $347 million meat export market for Nebraska, didn't fully trust our product because we couldn't track farm animals from birth to slaughter. Keeping export markets open is one reason behind the multi-million dollar effort to develop a traceability system. Others are food safety and homeland security. "Statewide's" Mike Tobias reports that right now most of the focus is on the beef industry, where few question the need for the system, but many wonder how it will work and who will pay for it.
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