Jan 12, 2004

Software sees the "FEED" trail

BY LEE EGERSTROM Pioneer Press

 

Most people couldn't tell you what they ate a couple of days ago. But a Brooklyn Center software company can help its customers figure out what cows ate months or years ago.

Feed Management Systems Inc. develops software programs for feed manufacturers and their beef cattle and hog-raising customers, helping them track what feed is sold, where it was consumed and what animals ate it.

That ability came in handy just before Christmas when the first U.S. case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, was diagnosed in a Washington state cow.

The infected cow's feed was a natural thing to check. Before they were banned 6 years ago, certain kinds of cattle feed - those containing protein concentrates made from parts of ruminant animals, such as cows and sheep - had been shown to transmit mad cow disease.

Bob Luedtke, business development manager at Feed Management Systems, said he called a feed manufacturing customer in Washington, which had provided feed to the infected cow, on Dec. 24 to point out that the mill's software program would have a record of what the infected cow and her herd had eaten.

Extensive electronic records kept by the feed mill showed that neither the infected cow nor her herd mates had been fed feed suspected of spreading mad cow disease.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture then began focusing on the age of the cow and its origins in Canada.

"I got a call back on Dec. 26. The feed was no longer suspect," Luedtke said.

Feed Management Systems was formed by the merger in 2002 of two long-established Minnesota and Georgia agribusiness software and management service companies. Feed Management Systems' software provides extensive record-keeping capabilities for feed mills and their clients.

The company has about 4,000 feed industry customers for one or more of its software programs. These customers account for about 70 percent of the feed manufactured in North America, 90 percent in South America, and about 60 percent of commercial feeds manufactured worldwide.

Commercial feed manufacturing is big business. There are about 2,000 feed manufacturing plants in the United States alone, said Rex Runyon, spokesman for the American Feed Industry Association, and 17,000 feed dealers sell about $25 billion in feed products to farmers and ranchers annually.

Privately held FMS doesn't reveal financial information, although Luedtke said sales of its software and service fees reach several million dollars each year. While its corporate headquarters are in the Twin Cities suburb, it has service centers and sales offices and about 40 employees scattered throughout the Midwest, Canada, South America and India. And it has dealership and partner ties with other companies in parts of Canada, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

The complexities of modern food and feed manufacturing make record-keeping essential if anything goes wrong in the food chain and products need to be traced back to plants or farms, Luedtke said. Canada, Europe and Japan have more rigid restrictions on feed and food, and what ingredients can be used, than does the United States, he added, "but that is changing, fast, after the mad cow incident."

Even though the use of bone meal and animal parts was considered an organic protein feed supplement in years past, now nearly everything that gets fed to animals needs to be recorded, he said. That is especially so for farmers who use medical, or pharmaceutical ingredients, in feed for animal health or safety.

That also opens other issues with some consumers at home and with a large number of export customers abroad. In the case of Europe, for instance, customers don't want to buy beef or pork products that come from cows and pigs fed hormones or other growth stimulants.

United Farmers Coop, based at Lafayette and serving several communities in the New Ulm area of south-central Minnesota, learned that three years ago when Swift & Co. at Worthington shipped pork to Europe, said Steve LeBrun, feed division manager at the co-op. European inspectors found one carcass contained high levels of testosterone, and wondered if the pig had been fed a hormone feed mixture.

As it turns out, that one pig had some sexual identity issues. It was what the farm trade calls a boar (male), not a barrow (a castrated male). United Farmers' feed mill at Klossner uses Feed Management Systems software and was able to show USDA investigators that the Minnesota pig was just virile, not pumped up.

"When meat inspectors in Europe can trace one pig carcass back to a Klossner (Minn.) farm, and then to the feed the pig had eaten, you know a new era for traceability is here," LeBrun said.

"That made a believer out of me," he added. "When a car drives up and it says USDA, it gets your attention in a hurry. You know it isn't a social call."

Feed Management Systems' Luedtke said such assurances will be important for American farmers and their meat processors to win back export markets that were put on hold with the Dec. 23 announcement of a mad cow case. About $3 billion in annual beef exports to Japan, Korea and Mexico are at risk.

Without trace back capabilities for all feed ingredients, feed ingredient suppliers and feed use on farms, any investigation in a food safety crisis would become "a nightmare of digging around in file drawers, trying to find a paper trail," he said.