Meet the needs for surveillance, preparedness, response, and outreach necessary to protect american agriculture and accomplish veterinary services mission goals

This Cooperative Agreement award from the United States Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) under the Plant and Animal Disease, Pest Control, and Animal Care Federal Grant Program (CFDA 10.025) provides $204,235 to the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) to support activities necessary for agricultural disease traceability, preparedness, and outreach.

The key products and services to be delivered under this one-year award include: 1) Completing assigned national priority trace exercises to test traceability capabilities, 2) Making official animal identification devices available to producers and increasing adoption of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags, 3) Maintaining and updating information sharing systems for official identification, animal health events, and movement records, 4) Upgrading the state's Emerging Threats Database to capture electronic records for RFID/ID distribution, disease management, and electronic certificates of veterinary inspection, and 5) Providing outreach to various agricultural industry sectors on animal disease traceability programs. This award will help CDFA, a critical federal partner, enhance agricultural disease surveillance, preparedness, and traceability across California from April 1, 2025 to March 31, 2026.

Activities to be performed - traceability performance measures: 1. Complete assigned national priority trace exercises over the cooperative agreement year (a) work with national animal disease traceability staff to acquire national priority trace information. (b) assemble a california department of food and agriculture team across headquarters and districts to perform/facilitate trace utilizing paper and electronic records and correspond with relevant external partners. (c) enter trace data into emergency management response system. 2. Metrics: numbers of traces completed, traces failed, and confounding factors complete national priority trace exercises over the cooperative agreement year. (a) work with the national administration of official identification (b) make official identification devices available to producers and options for increasing usage of radio frequency identification tags. (c) maintain records of official identification devices distributed and applied to ensure timely retrieval of records. 3. Information sharing: (a) maintain and update information sharing systems utilized for the distribution of official identification, program disease, and movement record keeping. (b) integrate california department of food and agriculture emerging threats database for summary data sharing with animal health events repository system. 4. Electronic records: (a) upgrade emerging threats database. (b) capture data for radio frequency identification/official identification distribution, program disease work, electronic certificate of veterinary inspection management, increase use of electronic records by accredited veterinarians. 5. Outr each: provide outreach to multiple sectors of the industry in support of animal disease traceability programs: USDA, cattle industry events, small ruminants, equine, and poultry, agriculture inspection stations, veterinarians and local vmas, veterinary students, future producers and veterinarians. 6. Compliance and enforcement of traceability regulations: provide outreach and education to accredited veterinarians and veterinary clinics. Refer cases of non-compliant interstate certificate of veterinary inspection's issued by accredited veterinarians to investigative and enforcement services and state investigators for follow up. Investigation outcomes include citation letters and letters of warning for non-compliant incoming and outgoing certificate of veterinary inspections. Most instances of non-compliance will be followed by visits to accredited veterinarians to gain compliance. Deliverables and expected outcomes -meet the needs for surveillance, preparedness, response, and outreach necessary to protect american agriculture and accomplish veterinary services mission goals. Intended beneficiaries - california and united states agriculture producers and consumers. Subrecipient activities - not applicable.