The United State Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is posting a general programs standards document for the agency’s animal disease traceability regulations. The program standards provide technical information about different program elements outlined in the existing regulations, as well as testing and approval requirements for companies to bring new official ID tags to the market. This detail can be helpful to producers, industry and companies who are involved with the traceability program.
This document does not include any changes to the animal disease traceability regulations or changes to policies related to the implementation of RFID for official ID devices.
Animal disease traceability, or knowing where diseased and at-risk animals are, where they’ve been, and when, is important to ensuring a rapid response when animal disease events take place. Although animal disease traceability does not prevent disease, an efficient and accurate traceability system reduces the number of animals and response time involved in a disease investigation; which, in turn, reduces the economic impact on owners and affected communities.
More information about animal disease traceability is available at: https://www.aphis.usda.gov/animalhealth/traceability
