Allan Barber: Animal ID crucial to safeguarding NZ meat's reputation

A meeting I facilitated in Wellington this month gathered together most of the interested parties important in getting the long-awaited animal identification and traceability system in place.

Everybody came to the same conclusion: a failsafe system is critically important to protecting New Zealand's international reputation for high quality meat.

It would take just one disease outbreak to ruin that reputation, not because of the sickness itself, but because there is no system capable of tracking all animal movements within New Zealand. This is the most important capability if an event occurs which threatens our biosecurity defences.

Overseas customers are demanding greater evidence of where food products come from and how they were produced. Japanese consumers can now enter the barcode for the meat, fruit or vegetable they are considering buying and see a photograph of the grower and details of the product on a screen.

Overseas regulatory agencies set the base rules for a country's access to their market, and they will adjust these to the circumstances, whether dictated by trade access deals or biosecurity concerns. But it is increasingly the power of the retailer, and ultimately the consumer, that is driving the need for traceability.

Three months ago I noted that the introduction of a system was gathering pace, with the imminent appointment of a project director to manage the process on behalf of the Animal ID and Traceability Governance Group, comprising representatives from the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, Biosecurity NZ, Food Safety, the meat industry and farmer organisations.

The good news is the project director is now in place and the governance group is meeting this week to make some key decisions about timing, technology, ownership of the core registry and the data required to form the basis of a system.

Tony Britt, who was responsible for introducing the national livestock identification system in Victoria, told the Wellington meeting it had taken six years to achieve the introduction of compulsory electronic tagging, and the state government had taken a more active role than the other Australian states. Unfortunately, we may not have six years, either before the EU, US and Japan insist on guaranteed traceability or the phone goes one day to report a disease outbreak or food safety scare.

There is some good news though, with plenty of companies in New Zealand able to provide technology solutions manufactured to a common international standard, advice and help available from Australia, and a growing realisation among farmers that there will be benefits from electronic animal ID.

The introduction of compulsory animal ID seems to be a clear case of Catch-22 - farmers won't take it up until it is mandated, but the Government and its agencies won't mandate it until the industry adopts it voluntarily. The challenge for the governance group is to manage its way through this apparent impasse, where neither party will willingly take the lead. Ideally there will be sufficient voluntary farmer uptake for the mandatory introduction to be a formality.

The most decisive step would be to make a firm decision on the use of radio frequency technology manufactured to the international standard. Then everybody - farmers, processors, sale yards, transport operators - could invest confidently in eartags, scanners, readers and animal handling equipment, knowing they wouldn't have to change it in a couple of years. After that, it might all start to fall into place.

* Allan Barber is a freelance writer, business consultant and former chief operating officer at Affco.

* Declaration of interest: Barber Strategic has advised a group of electronic animal identification manufacturers, and arranged and facilitated the Wellington meeting referred to.