O.k., this post is a little off-subject from our normal food safety-centric write-ups, but it’s important nonetheless. You’re still with us, right? What we’re writing about today is a food animal tracking system, NAIS. And while it won’t make your food safer, per se, it will provide a safeguard to maintain food security by protecting animal health. This is an important distinction because, when we typically talk food safety, we’re referring to the expectation we all share that each morsel and bite we eat is, well, safe from disease and toxins. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) focuses instead on ensuring the availability of our animal food supply, and this is something you should definitely care about.

NAIS, a program run by the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, helps track and trace the movement of livestock throughout the country. Basically, NAIS will tag food animals such as cows, and, as a consequence, know where each animal has been moved to or has been.

It may sound silly to monitor farm animals so closely, but the identification system serves an important purpose: fighting animal disease. By enabling a disease to be traced within a 48-hour period, NAIS will dramatically improve the United States’ response capacity to limit the spread of animal diseases.

Why do we say dramatically? Because, according to JAVMA News, “Investigators spent an average of 199 days tracing the sources of animals infected with bovine tuberculosis between October 2005 and August 2007.” So, if you think about it, that is pretty dramatic, isn’t it – decrease the response time from 199 days to 48 hours. Think of the time and effort that can be saved, and the potential for avoiding the spread of illness and disease. And when you save animals from getting sick, you’re not only protecting human health, you’re saving all of us money in the long run.

For example, a disease like foot and mouth disease (FMD) spreads very quickly, and a rapid response is critical to preventing a potential national outbreak that could cost millions of animals’ lives and billions of dollars. Or, if a cow is showing any signs that it may be affected with “mad cow disease” (BSE, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy), NAIS would allow authorities to rapidly identify and locate the offspring of that cow and other cows that may have been exposed to the same feed that was eaten by that cow, preventing them from entering our food system.

NAIS is not yet mandatory, but that hasn’t stopped savvy ranchers and livestock producers from getting on board with the system. By December 2008, almost a third (492,000) of the nation's food animal production facilities were registered. To encourage more farmers and ranchers to register with the system, the USDA has asked veterinarians to talk up the benefits of the system. The USDA has even developed a tool kit to help the vets out. (Veterinarians are also encouraged to register their own premises, including their veterinary hospitals.)

The benefits are obvious and registration is easy. Farmers first sign up for premises identification, a way for authorities to contain disease by locating producers in an area. After that, livestock must be registered individually or in lots and permanently identified (depending on the species).

We hope the remaining two thirds of food animal producers will get on board with NAIS sooner rather than later. Sure, we’ve made significant progress fighting disease in livestock, and sure, there are no major disease epidemics in farm animals at the moment. But why wait for the unforeseen to take action? Forty-eight hours sure sounds a lot better than 199 days to us, and we all want to make sure there’s an adequate food supply available in our country.