South Africa’s agriculture industry is under pressure to implement a credible traceability system to ensure improved food safety and quality control. The country is currently one of only a few African countries without a traceability system.
As a leading global agricultural exporter of fruit, vegetables, grains and livestock, South Africa must maintain its competitive edge in the face of growing international competition. Local agribusinesses are under pressure to prioritise product safety, quality, sustainability and traceability to ensure market success.
An advanced traceability system which is able to track products from farm to fork is key to remaining globally competitive and imperative if South Africa is to maintain global market access, comply with increasingly stringent international food safety and quality regulations and meet the rising consumer demand for ethical and sustainable products.
End-to-end traceability in agriculture offers significant benefits beyond compliance and food safety. By streamlining operations, reducing costs, preventing fraud and opening new markets, it empowers producers to enhance profitability and sustainability.
The lack of a traceability system has consequences for the country. Outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease and African swine fever, for example, have previously resulted in export bans on fresh meat and wool while an outbreak of avian flu in 2023 resulted in chicken farmers being forced to cull a large number of birds. These outbreaks don’t only pose a risk to domestic supply chains but also to exports of meat and wool. In 2022, for example, China banned the import of all cloven-hoofed animals and egg products, including wool, from South Africa.
Not-for-profit industry organisation Red Meat Industry Services (RMIS) believes the red meat industry has the potential to grow by more than 20% above ‘a business as usual’ scenario, adding more than R12 billion to South Africa’s agricultural GDP per annum by 2030. However, this will require the involvement of both the struggling informal agricultural sector as well as the commercial sector and overcoming limitations including sporadic disease outbreaks, failing public sector health and disease services, collapsing vaccine development and provision capacities and implementing – and enforcing – an identification and traceability system.
Although many of these limitations are the responsibility of the state, in reality the state will not be able to provide more comprehensive and effective services due to limited funds and capacity. Instead, it will need to partner with the private sector and align resources based on common prioritised goals.
RMIS launched the first phase of South Africa’s red meat traceability system in November 2024, representing a major step forward in ensuring that every link in the red meat supply chain is accurately tracked and managed. The first phase involves global location numbers to identify and map key locations within the red meat industry supply chain such as farms, feedlots, auction houses and abattoirs to provide a location reference for sharing traceability data.
Subsequent phases will focus on capturing and sharing animal data. Farmers will be required to tag each animal with a unique identifying number based on the universal digital number system. Various recordkeeping systems will be integrated with the platform in an approach that decentralises data management while ensuring that standardised sharing of information occurs to maintain data integrity and traceability from production to the end-consumer.
Dewald Olivier, CEO of RMIS believes that traceability could be the most impactful initiative the livestock industry has seen since South Africa became a net exporter of red meat. He concedes, however, that the success of the initiative will depend on the collaboration of all stakeholders including small-scale and commercial farmers, auction houses, feedlots, abattoirs, service providers and government entities.
There are a number of countries that have successfully implemented traceability systems. Uruguay, for example, has a cattle traceability system that was introduced in response to a foot-and-mouth disease emergency in 2001. Today, its highly effective traceability systems allows its beef to access premium global markets.
Encouragingly, the new agricultural minister, John Steenhuisen, has recognised the value of a track-and-trace system and has committed to prioritising the implementation of a system to monitor the movement of animals around the country in a bid to address the kind of animal health crises that have vexed farmers in recent years and caused significant financial losses.
Steenhuisen has acknowledged that a track-and-trace system is necessary because international export markets and trade organisations are moving to a system where trade will only be possible with livestock products if these products can be traced back to their origin. Locally, he says, it will also help to mitigate the risk of stock theft as each animal will be traceable to the original owner and its movements recorded.
Government support of a robust and effective traceability system is imperative if South Africa is to grow exports of agri products. Not only will a system of this nature address immediate challenges such as disease outbreaks, but it also lays the foundation for long-term sustainability and growth. While the journey to full traceability will be complex, the potential benefits are substantial.
