Traceability Requirements in Pork ValueChain, including that of Organic and Natural Pig Farming

Pigs play a pivotal role in meeting the nutritional security owing to its unique attributes like high fecundity, early maturity and low production cost. However, piggery sector is much unorganized and demand of pork is exponentially increasing over the decades. To mitigate the gap of about 62% deficiency of pork in the country, there is a need of digitization of pork value chain with proper traceability, so that different developmental policies can reach to the stakeholders. Profitability and operational efficiency for all stakeholders in the pork value chain can be increased many folds by providing assured quality pork while working under a traceable value chain.

Traceability is defined as the ability to discern, identify and follow the movement of a food or substance intended to be or expected to be incorporated into a food, through all stages of production, processing and distribution. Traceability involves documenting and linking the production, processing, and distribution chain of food products and ingredients. Tractability is a key precondition for the universal acceptability of any food system and on which the national responsibility of providing safe food stands.

Components of livestock traceability

Livestock value chain is a very complex network of livestock rearers, traders, veterinary authorities, abattoir managers, retailers, consumers etc. Networking of all the players of the value chain is the basic requirement for implementing livestock traceability. Advances in communication technology can support efforts in networking of all stakeholders. Enabling tracing back of ownership details and place of slaughter requires collection and maintenance of data related to each animal in common database which can be retrieved by consumers and producers in times of necessity.  Conceptualization and understanding of different components of livestock value chain of importance in traceability system is prerequisite for conceptualizing and implementing the traceability. Different components and extent of their required involvement for establishment of traceability system are as follows:

• Traceability implementation agency: A centralized agency which can work for studying the value chain, customizing the traceability system based on the International requirements and ground realities of the country, setting up identification standards, issuing identification codes, application on to animals and maintaining the centralized database maintaining the information will be the. Agency needs to work in close contact with stakeholders to implement the system.
• Livestock owner: Animal and its identification is the basic building block for the traceability system. Willingness of livestock owner and his active involvement is crucial for successful system. Owner needs to tag his animal, report birth, death and movement of animals to concerned authorities. Keeping in mind the overall level of education among livestock holders system devised must be easily understandable and implementable. Adequate support system must be put in place make livestock owner to understand the system and hand hold him in implementation. Delivery of ear tags and registration facility must be easily accessible to owner. Financial support in terms of taking care of cost of the consumable involved must be provided by government at least in initial stages. Utilization of the system for range of service delivery like insurance, subsidies, loans, health management etc will encourages owner and makes him work actively for the success of the system.
• Meat processors: Abattoir is the critical link in traceability system. Animals are received from various sources for slaughter and meat production. If the animals received are tagged and registered, they need to be slaughtered and identity needs to be maintained during slaughtering, dressing and packaging. Traceability code need to be put on the label which will enable consumer to trace back the details and that completes the system. System developed for traceability must take in to account the complexities of slaughtering and dressing, number of persons involved, lower education level of personnel involved, speed of the processing time, convenience and cost. Adequate checks and balances need to be put in place to ensure that labelling is appropriate and there are no errors in coding system. Recording of quality of the meat and carcass against the identification code can work as valuable feedback for livestock owners to modify their rearing system.
• Traders and transporters: Ideal traceability system requires that traders and transporters maintain record of the animals received and sold by them. They need to provide the animal transaction information and corresponding details on regular intervals to concerned authorities. Transporters must ensure that information regarding the animals which are transported are communicated to authorities before transporting them.
• Consumers: Enhancing awareness regarding quality issues and utility of traceability among consumers will ensure that they pay extra for the traceable livestock products in the interest of their health. Traceability involves cost and definitely its implementation will add on to the price of the products. If the consumers are ready to pay extra price for the traceable meat industry will try to meet the requirements and will sustain the traceability initiatives in long term. At present awareness of the consumers on quality issues is minimal.
• Legislation: Question of whether to make the traceability system mandatory or voluntary needs to be answered before initiating implementation. Voluntary systems are driven by consumer interest or importing country requirements. Whereas, mandatory systems require legislative backing. EU went in mandatory system as a consequence of incidences of BSE and corresponding drop in export demand which seriously affected the profitability in the sector. Many countries are following voluntary system or restricted them to export meat sector only. It is suggestible to make it voluntary initially and once the critical awareness is reached make it mandatory. To justify the cost of implementation of traceability system applications in all its form need to be exploited from the traceability system.

Application of traceability system in Indian piggery sector

Traceability system has multiple applications in piggery sector. Some of the applications are as follows:

• Aids efficient monitoring of safety issues by food regulatory agencies: Food traceability systems allow supply chain actors and regulatory authorities to identify the source of a food safety or quality problem and initiate procedures to remedy it. Traceability can also help identify a product at any specified stage of the supply chain: where the food came from (one step back) and where the food went (one step forward). When traceability systems are combined with safety and quality management systems, they can make associated food safety measures more effective and efficient. By providing information on suppliers or customers involved in potential food safety issues, traceability can enable targeted product recalls or withdrawals.

• Health management of animals: Without having centralized real time information on farms and animals, veterinarians face the problem in planning the vaccination dosage requirement, requirement of personnel for implementing prevention programmes and communicating all the stakeholders in the wake of disease outbreaks. Online software system generated as part of traceability system will help in communicating disease outbreak information to farmers of the affected region thereby helping to intensify bio-security measures & initiate disease prevention strategies.

• Registration and centralized availability of information on farms: Traceability system will enable enrolment of farms, issue of farm/ premises card, storing of contract address and mobile numbers of the farmers in the database.  Availability of all the existing pig farmers in single source will help developmental agencies to plan, target and implement developmental programmes.

• Registration and centralized availability of information on abattoirs: Hygienic harvesting of pigs is prerequisite for producing quality and hygienic pork production. Infrastructure available for hygienic slaughter of pigs is limited. Local bodies do provide a place for slaughter but often such places do not have adequate infrastructure for ensuring clean meat production. Traceability system enables registration of abattoirs, storing of contact details of the in-charges, capacity of slaughter etc. Once the information on number of slaughter places and facilities available are pooled, systematic intervention to increase the basic minimum facility can be planned.

• Effective service delivery through E- governance: Traceability system provides an interface wherein real time farm activities like vaccination, medication, deworming etc can be updated onto database. Enrolment of animals, tagging with internationally approved ear tag numbers will enable targeted delivery of schemes, reduces duplication of efforts and will help in monitoring the impact of the scheme after its implementation.  

• Performance recording of livestock: Recording of performance will help in selecting the appropriate breeding animals. In the absence of performance recording system enhancing genetic potential through selective breeding will be constrained by lack of information on availability of breeding animals. Traceability system provides add-on scientific pig management system which will help in efficient management of the piggery farm and recording of all the farm activities, generating customized alerts and will help farmer manage his farm on scientific lines.