UHF for livestock tracing – the Brits get it!

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Gary Hartley of GS1 New Zealand

By Gary Hartley of GS1 New Zealand

Europe’s horsemeat scandal has gone beyond a joke. Extensive DNA testing on beef products supplied to consumers across the European Union has shown that up to five percent could contain horsemeat. Since February, millions of prepared meals were pulled from shelves in the widening scandal – from meatballs in Ikea stores in the Netherlands, to sausages in Russia and frozen burgers in Britain’s Tesco chain.

Now the European Commission has ordered tests for the potentially harmful horse drug phenylbutazone, or bute, long banned from the human food chain. Consumer confidence in EU meat supply chains is shot.

No wonder that leaders of Britain’s red meat industry are taking a serious interest in New Zealand’s early experience with technology for pasture-to-plate traceability. Their own, horsemeat experience has brought great clarity to the merits of being able to trace every beef or sheep product back to its farm of origin. No embarrassing ‘ambulance-under- the-the-cliff’ DNA testing required. No uncertainty on the providence or quality of meat products at any point in the supply chain.

Mark Rance, my colleague in the New Zealand RFID Pathfinder Group, recently took the good news to an international livestock ID industry conference in Inverness, Scotland. They hardly let him out of the room with all their questions!

Mark presented on the Pathfinder-instigated pilot usage of RFID on the EPC standard (Electronic Product Code) for the processing and supply of New Zealand venison to Germany in late 2012. It was this country’s first experience with whole-of-supply-chain traceability on chilled meat exports, starting with tagged animals on-farm and ending with primal cuts being distributed to retailers (in this case, retailers in Hamburg). The pilot was a success, building on previous trials of EPC RFID tags and readers on deer, cattle and sheep in New Zealand.

So interested was the UK contingent at the conference that Mark Rance was invited to the House of Lords to brief Lord Curry of Kirkharle, a leading voice in British agriculture and sustainable farming. Lord Curry was very keen to hear about the technology proven Downunder for traceability, and also for more productive management of animals and pasture on farms.

Thus far, the UK meat industry has focused on using RFID only for identifying and tracing livestock, with no real thought given to meat products further around the supply chain. The UK has a low frequency RFID scheme for sheep, similar to this country’s National Animal Identification and Tracing programme (NAIT) for cattle and deer. In both instances, the primary aim is to track and trace livestock for biosecurity reasons. What Europe is waking up to is the need for livestock to be treated as raw material in a consumer food supply chain – and for animal ID to be fully integrated into food traceability systems. Low frequency forms of animal ID are really not fi t for this purpose. And this is a point which the New Zealand Pathfinder Group has made for years.

Using ultra high frequency (UHF) RFID for livestock ID and tracing will enable the EPC standard to be applied end-to-end in the supply chain, from farm to retail distributor. The venison pilot effectively demonstrated just this in late 2012 – and the serious interest being shown from the UK now underscores the significance of our pilot.

In New Zealand, we can expect an increasing level of interest from our own meat industry in the UHF/EPC option for animal ID on farms. Of course we had nothing to do with horsemeat fraud in Europe but the scandal will impact on everyone by heightening demand for re-assurance on providence and quality in every meat supply chain.

As a major meat exporting nation, can New Zealand afford to be less than international best practice on traceability? The venison pilot and earlier work with UHF on farms are a great step in that direction. The Brits are surely confirming this with their interest.

It’s time for the rest of our meat industry – farmers as well as processors and marketers – to get more serious about adopting the best technologies for pasture-to-plate traceability. I am confident we will get there, but let’s do it sooner rather than later.

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