KANSAS CITY, Mo. – The 2018 National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA) Strategy Forum on Livestock Traceability, which will be held in Kansas City Sept. 24-26, will showcase the most current technology, products and services focused on cattle traceability and will feature a wide variety of speakers to address traceability from different viewpoints.

Jennifer Houston, 2018 NCBA president-elect will be the opening speaker at the 2018 forum.

“The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) and NIAA have often worked together on issues that impact the beef industry,” Houston said. “We think it is important to reach out to other people in the industry. Both organizations are contractors to the Beef Checkoff, so issues that are of interest to the industry, such as disease traceability and antimicrobial resistance, merit the support of associations such as ours.”

Traceability is hot topic for the entire agriculture industry, including NCBA. “Of course, we already have the mandatory Animal Disease Traceability program, but the question is what else can traceability do for the industry, and what steps should we be taking next?” Houston said. “Traceability is an important issue that is already on the minds of many industry stakeholders. While opinions differ on what comes next, we can all agree that there are many unanswered questions and we need to begin putting the pieces together and identifying solutions that will work for all of us.”

In addition to traceability presentations by the featured speakers throughout the forum, the Cattle Traceability Working Group will issue a report from ideas and discussions that were had during the 2017 forum, and work that was done following the forum.

“We just need to keep looking to the future on how we improve the disease traceability system that we have now, and how we continue to improve,” Houston said. “The NIAA Strategy Forum on Livestock Traceability has speakers that will help us focus on that.”

For more information on the 2018 forum or to register, go to www.animalagriculture.org.