Tracking Food - Worldwide

In the last decade, Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and its human form, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) have become a global hot-button for food safety. Potentially infected BSE materials have been distributed internationally through trade of live cattle, cattle products and by-products. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the World Health Organisation (WHO) and World Animal Health Organisation strongly urge countries to evaluate their risks and take immediate action to safeguard the food supply.

The move to limit human health risk from BSE is spearheaded by FAO/WHO Codex Alimentarius – which is currently finalizing work on a 'Code of Practice for Good Animal Feeding' to ensure that animal products cannot create risks to consumers. The Code will embody regulations to ensure that foods and feedstuffs are traceable "one step forward and one step back" all the way from field to plate. Beef Concepts' Bovitrak is designed to do that and more, by tracing individual animals from calving to processing.

Under the Codex Alimentarius Commission, traceability is defined as the ability to trace the history, application or location of a product, including:

the origin of materials and parts
the processing history
the distribution and location of the product after delivery

In accordance with the strong stance being taken globally, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is also moving to establish food safety standards that include establishing a "traceability system, which enables the identification of product lots and their relation with batches of raw materials, processing and distribution records".

European Union

Food quality and purity are top-of-mind for Europeans. As expected, the identification and labelling of beef and veal is of particular concern for the EU. The EU regulation demands complete transparency of conditions governing the production and marketing of beef products. Compulsory, origin-based labelling for monitoring and tracing products throughout the food chain is central to their registration and identification system. Also included:

ear tags for the individual identification of cattle
computerized databases
cattle passports that track all movement
individual holding registers detailing herd births, deaths and movements

Any meat product must include labelling that incorporates the animal(s)' reference code, country of origin, country of residence, and place of raising and processing (including license numbers of those involved). Regulations will be progressively extended to ensure that any meat imported to or raised in the EU will be traceable and safe.

Within the EU, strict feeding regulations are in place, including prohibition of:

feeding protein derived from any mammal to ruminants
feeding any protein transformed and derived from mammals, birds and fish to any farm animal intended for the production of food (milk and milk products, eggs and egg products as well as gelatine).

International trends

The International Office on Epizootic Diseases (OIE) guarantees the food safety of world trade by drafting health rules on the international trade of animals and their products. Their regulations regarding import and export of food products (especially beef) are extremely strict.

Exporting meat products internationally means that countries must fulfil increasingly stringent regulations regarding place of origin labelling and traceability requirements. Bovitrak and the Viewtrak Beeftrak system are currently the only complete technology – available right now – to help North American exporters meet those requirements. All Bovitrak data will be completely compatible with any tagging program established in this country. Bovitrak subscribers will have the inside track on compliance with the much tougher traceability regulations currently being formulated. The system meets the Canadian Cattle Identification mandatory tagging requirements as well.

Tracking Food - Worldwide

European Union

International trends

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