Traceability videos
The importance of eID for traceability
Discover how electronic identification (eID) supports livestock traceability across the supply chain. Hear from South Australian sheep producer Lynton Arney, livestock consultant Nathan Scott, saleyard operator Paul Christopher and supply chain manager Mark Inglis, about how eID and the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) work together to protect market access and strengthen Australia’s sheep industry.
Most of our lamb is exported these days and so we've got to have the traceability to maintain those markets. And if we fail to do that, it's going to cost the industry big time in the long run.
In an exotic disease outbreak, we will go through a national standstill. Producers can't sell stock. Agents can't sell stock. Even for us as consultants, everything comes to a grinding halt in that moment. And when we hear some of these numbers thrown around about what an exotic disease outbreak might cost us as an industry, the vast majority of that is in our lost markets. And the vast majority of that money is coming out of farmers pockets. So the farmers and and the rest of us in the industry, we should be desperate for a traceability [music] system that actually helps us nail these exotic disease outbreaks as quickly as possible so that we can prove that it's eradicated and get our export markets opened up as quickly as we possibly can.
We're in the process of moving from a paperbased system that relies heavily on human input into something that's significantly more efficient and timely in our ability to trace animals and the cohorts that they've had contact with. The introduction of eID takes so much of that human element away that drastically improves the accuracy and the efficiency of the whole process.
If we get an exotic disease, um we'll be able to trace it back far quicker than we could before when we're only reading the tags and hopefully people had uploaded the data and stuff which could take weeks, months where with eID it's a matter of hours.
Whilst the eid is actually a requirement, it's a great opportunity to actually start finding those extra ways to improve your business through data collection. So, we're not actually manually entering data, which gives us a great degree of accuracy. And as they animals run through the autodrafter, we're able to collect a weight on them each time. It's simple to feed into the system to actually make better breeding decisions.
Going back before we started with eID, it would take us two days to actually work out the mating decisions for the use. Now, we've got more than twice as many sheep, and we're able to do it all in one day. In the background, you'll see that we have our scanners, which are three-way Hamilton drafts. The agents, as they're categorizing the mobs, they run through a three-way drafter, and that is capturing the data that we need. They move those around occasionally and when they move a mob the actual eid numbers go with them. Our main thing is at the end of the sale we have to upload the data to the NLIS. The overall time to process a sale I believe would be less. If we have a sheep that escapes, we get them in. I can get my hand wand and I know who belongs to them straight away and I can give them back to the rightful owner.
The customers and the consumers are being far more discerning nowadays than what we've ever seen. They're wanting to know where their product has come from, how it's being treated, and how we actually process that animal through our uh processing facilities. Certain markets will not accept our product unless we have got um total traceability on the product. If we look back 10, 15, 20 years ago, we used to put one lamb um in a box and send it to a market. Nowadays, those lambs that we process here could go to 19 different countries. So, the ability for us to be able to trace those lambs absolutely helps us maintain that market access and also helps us maintain those premium products into those markets.
There's always a phase in period where you have issues and you work through. But in the end what we've done [music] nationally um with mandatory eID it it is only of a benefit to us as a industry and us as a country going forward and everyone should see it that way.
eID and traceability across the supply chain
Livestock consultant Nathan Scott from Achieve Ag Solutions explains how electronic identification (eID) strengthens traceability, supports a faster response to exotic disease outbreaks and helps protect Australia’s vital export markets. He also explores how eID reduces human error and gives producers access to more accurate, individual-animal data.
Often when people hear the word biosecurity, they think of it as just one of those government words that gets thrown around. As producers, we should be thinking more of it as business security. We rely very heavily in our export markets in being able to prove that our products are safe in an exotic disease outbreak. We will go through a national standstill. Producers can't sell stock. Agents can't sell stock. Even for us as consultants, everything comes to a grinding halt in that moment. And when we hear some of these numbers thrown around about what an exotic disease outbreak might cost us as an industry, the vast majority of that is in our lost markets. And the vast majority of that money is coming out of farmers pockets. So the farmers and and the rest of us in the industry, we should be desperate for a traceability system that actually helps us nail these exotic disease outbreaks as quickly as possible so that we can prove that it's eradicated and get our export markets opened up as quickly as we possibly can. It's incredibly important to the the long-term sustainability of our businesses. One of the most significant factors in the change from a traditional paper-based system and visual tags to an eID system is it takes away some of that risk of human error. While we're just heavily reliant on people filling out an NVD when the reality is for lots of people, the NVD is the piece of paper they have to fill out quickly before the truck leaves. It's it's actually an incredibly important piece of paper, but it also relies heavily on everyone writing down the PIC numbers of any animals that are that are from another property that are on their place that are now leaving. That that's not been done historically very well by farmers. The the introduction of EID takes so much of that human element away that drastically improves the accuracy and the efficiency of the whole process. It gives us the chance to be able to look at individual animal performance rather than just the mob based and average based system that we've been operating on for so many years. There's so much variation in performance within individuals that we've just never been able to see because we haven't been able to trace the individuals. Now we've got that opportunity in front of us.
eID and traceability in processing
Thomas Foods International farm assurance and supply chain manager, Mark Inglis, shares practical insights into how electronic identification (eID) supports livestock traceability from the processing perspective. Learn about how important traceability is in maintaining market access for Australia’s premium lamb products.
The customers and the consumers are being far more discerning nowadays than what we've ever seen. They're wanting to know where their product has come from, how it's being treated, and how we actually process that animal through our processing facilities. Yeah, I think going forward it's going to be very much the focus on markets and market access. There's certain aspect certain markets out there that currently don't require it. But what we have seen is um certain markets that will not accept our product unless we have got um total traceability on the product. You know, we see a myriad of markets across the world all at different levels of eID and customer guarantee more and more so from a processor perspective. You know, we're looking at assuring our markets, making sure that we've got access to markets around the world. [music] And eID and RFID certainly help that.
If we look back 10, 15, 20 years ago, we used to put one lamb in a box and send it to a market. Nowadays, those lambs that we process here could go to 19 different countries. So the ability for us to be able to trace those lambs into those markets absolutely helps us maintain that market access and also helps us maintain those premium products into those markets. We can take a leaf out of the book of the cattle industry. The cattle industry have been doing it now for 20some plus years. One of the real advantages of it going forward and we've certainly seen it in the beef industry is the ability to look at individual carcass data feedback. I mean, as we go forward and we get some of the systems sorted out, like hook tracking and things like that, the ability for us as processes to feed back meaningful information back to producers to be able to make on farm decisions and on farm management will just help them go to the next level. There's always a phase in period where you have issues and you work through but in the end what we've done nationally with mandatory aid it it is only of a benefit to us as a industry and us as a country going forward and everyone should see it that way.
eID and traceability in saleyards
Saleyard manager Paul Christopher from Horsham Livestock Exchange talks about moving from visual tags and mob-based animal movements to electronic identification (eID) and individual traceability in the saleyard. Hear about his experiences with foot and mouth disease in Nepal and his insights into the important role of eID for livestock traceability and protecting Australian’s sheep industry.
eID and traceability for sheep producers
South Australian sheep producer Lynton Arney explains how electronic identification (eID) has improved the accuracy and efficiency of data collection for decision making in his business, Inverbrackie Border Leicester Stud. He shares how producers can use individual-animal data to make informed breeding and management decisions, improve productivity and strengthen their business.
In 2005, we moved into electronic tags. That just revolutionised our business. Most of our lamb is exported these days, and so we've got to have the traceability to maintain those markets. But as far as I'm concerned, the extra information that you can get out of them is a lot better in the long run.
We're now running about 750 ewes. Everything's performance recorded, keeping pedigree on everything. The amount of data we can collect without trying has been really good and as they animals run through the autodrafter, we're able to collect a weight on them each time and so we can put that into the program. So, we're not actually manually entering data, which gives us a great degree of accuracy.
Before when you're doing it manually, you'd always end up with a few duplicate tags or or animals that you just read the tag number wrong. Whereas that doesn't happen with eid and you've just got the information all the time that you're able to collect.
It's simple to feed into the system to actually make better breeding decisions. Going back before we started with the it would take us 2 days to actually work out the mating decisions for the use. Now we've got more than twice as many sheep and we're able to do it all in one day.
Whilst the eID is actually a requirement, it's a great opportunity to actually start finding those extra ways to improve your business through data collection. There's also a great opportunity if people are buying in stock to benchmark the mobs that they bought in. You'll scan them as they come off the truck so you'll know what mob it is. You might spend 20 minutes to be able to collect the information on that mob and that'll tell you whether you want to buy them again or whether you'd want to avoid them. It's fairly simple.
You don't need a lot of fancy programs. If you've got someone in the family that can run Excel, Excel is a really powerful program that enables you to do a heap of analytics on your data and you can make some pretty good decisions based on that.