Amid confusion from the government’s Animal Tracing Act and more recent proposed mandates for RFID from APHIS, a group of producers have formed the voluntary cattle tracking system, U.S. Cattle Trace (USCT). The inevitability of foreign animal disease risk underpins the priorities of this developing system.
Source: BEEF, February 2020. Link. USCT is a producer-driven program that will comply with any federal program requirements but is not a government program. The database is privately owned. Electronic readers collect only four pieces of data:
- The official animal identification number
- Time
- Date
- GPS location of where the tag is read
INSIGHTS: Kudos to this growing group of volunteers for taking action to begin enabling tracing in the event of a foreign disease entry to the U.S.