U.S. traceability capabilities in beef industry limited by sheer size

By Tom Johnston on 1/27/2016

ATLANTA — America’s lack of a complex animal traceability system the likes of Europe’s is not so much about insufficient technical know-how as it is the scale of the U.S. beef industry.

Speakers here at the International Production and Processing Expo noted that the U.S. already traces fully back to farm of origin, for example, in its Non-Hormone Treated Cattle program required for beef exports to Europe, but the industry overall is not set up to operate that way.

Brenden McCullough, vice president of technical services for National Beef, noted that four U.S. beef packing companies process more than 80 percent of fed cattle. His company, for example, slaughters about 400 head of cattle per hour. His European counterparts slaughter, say, 80 head of cattle per hour, as a matter of perspective.

As the U.S. beef industry is designed for efficiency and low-cost production to serve consumers accustomed to affordable food, slowing the chains in order to be able to achieve tracebacks of cattle to individual animals or farms would add more cost than the industry is willing to bear, McCullough said.

“The complexity that [Europe has] put in can be done in the U.S., but it cannot be done with the system we have and it definitely cannot be done at the price point we’re used to seeing meat at,” he said. (Europe mandates traceback to the individual animal for pork and beef claims — i.e. “corn fed,” “grass fed” — that cannot be visually inspected.)

Citing USDA data, McCullough noted there are more than 800,000 cow-calf producers in the U.S., each with an average of 42 head of cattle; more than 5,000 feedyards; and 6,278 federally inspected meat plants. Of those meat plants, about 600 deal in beef processing, with much fewer specifically doing slaughter.

“There are a small number of packers dealing with a large number of cattle with a huge amount of suppliers,” McCullough said. “… And everyone, if you’re going to do anything, wants to be paid for it. There are no freebies in the U.S. market.”

The U.S. beef industry is trying to establish a voluntary traceability system to meet China’s requirement that the U.S. certify at the slaughter plant the birth premise of every animal from which beef is derived to export to that country. 

But McCullough contends that a more feasible approach for the U.S. industry as it operates today is to manage a system that traces cattle to groups or batches of cattle.

“It’s not free, but it’s doable,” he said.