Animal disease traceability

If African Swine Fever or other foreign animal disease makes it into the United States, officials need to respond quickly to contain it, know where it came from, and prevent it from spreading.  Protocols in place by livestock producers will make tracing an outbreak much faster.

Amanda Chipman is an extension swine specialist at Iowa State University. She says if you haven’t already, request a Premises Identification Number, or PIN, from your state agriculture department. It’s a unique code that allows animal health officials to precisely identify where animals are located in the event of an animal health or food safety emergency.

"They have your contact information so if you’re within a control area they can notify you quicker, hopefully. It’s also required for movement permits, so you don’t want to slow down the process of getting movement permits by having to take resources, you know, people’s time in order to get you a premises identification number during an outbreak," says Chipman.

How fast could you prove you’re not connected to an infected site, or if your farm is infected, show where it may have come from?  Keep good records of everything that moves on and off your site, not just pigs and people.

"They’re going to want to know supplies and vehicles as well, how the source and destination pan out on all those movement records and then computerization of those records is really important," she says. "It just seems like that could be a big bottleneck if your records were not easily downloaded."