"The last uncharted supply chain""The last uncharted supply chain": IT companies to benefit from animal-tracking business
Tracking tens of millions of farm animals — animals which get replaced every few months — will be mandatory by 2009, and IT and data management companies are getting ready for big business opportunities
As we reported a few days ago, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Animal Identification System will go into effect in six months. It will be used to track animals to combat the spread of deadly and costly diseases. The challenge — and also great business opportunity — is that farmers and cowboys will need IT tools to track livestock’s whereabouts. Little wonder that IT vendors are hot on the trail. “Remember, this may be the last uncharted supply chain” says Raymond Majewski, IT manager for Global Animal Management (GAM). “These are farmers who have been conducting business in the same fashion from generation to generation. This is a big step to start identifying, then tracking, either individual or groups of animals by a unique identifier.”
NAIS will be a mandatory program by 2009. It was unveiled in May last year, and it will affect all agriculture-industry stakeholders involved in the breeding and production of cattle, goats, sheep, swine, poultry, deer, elk, and other breeds. In all, twenty-seven species of food animals are to be tracked. The USDA’s goal is to get to a point in which all premises and animals that have had direct contact with a diseased animal, whether foreign or domestic, could be identified within forty-eight hours. The forty-eight-hour trace-back speed is significant to contain the spread of infection.
For relevant IT vendors, the trace-back requirement is also significant, as it offers an opportunity for IT companies specializing in Web-linked data-management and data integration. These vendors are interested in providing solutions for cattle, poultry, and other animal operations. Look for a number of technology companies with special expertise in data warehousing and data management systems to play a big role on the animal tracking frontier, among them Redwood City, California-based Informatica (Nasdaq: INFA); Summit, New Jersey-based Global Animal Management (GAM), a division of Schering-Plough. These companies are prepared to distinguish themselves as ready, willing and able to put together the IT jigsaw puzzle of animal-ID and tracking technologies as NAIS implementations grow.
-read more in Nancy Cohen’s detailed TechNewsWorld report; and see the Web sites of Infomatica|GAM
