Trade Control and Expert System

TRACES is a veterinary and sanitary network which controls movement, import and export of live animals and animal products in Europe.This network is under the responsability of the European commission.

Preliminaries

Since the end of the nineteenth century, following the development of modern veterinary medicine and food safety, European states have built, in parallel with customs structures, veterinary inspection structures located at borders: Border Inspection Posts. These structures check all goods of animal origin and live animals as well, in order to avoid outbreaks of zoonoses and epizooties. Following the development of office computerisation and computer networking in the 80's, many countries started to think about veterinary computer certification.

In the 90's, according to the First Pilar, the European Union with the aim to strenghen Single Market and the protection of consumers began studying how to provide a European scale computer network dedicated to food safety and animal health.

The TRACES network started up in April 2004 in replacement of the older ANIMO and SHIFT networks.

Definition of the TRACES network

TRACES is a veterinary and sanitary network which controls movement, import and export of live animals and animal products in Europe. The Directorate-General for Health and Consumers, Directorate D, unit D1, sector TRACES, is in charge of the workload.

TRACES stands for "Trade Control and Expert System", this acronym enhances the traceability aspect which constitutes the core element of the system and is a key factor of food safety. The first mention of this system is the decision of the Commission 2003/623/CEof 19/08/2003.

TRACES is based on a network using internet veterinary authorities of Members States and participating third countries. Central and local authorities, border inspection posts and economics operators are linked via TRACES.

-TRACES uses all the languages of the EU plus Russian.

- TRACES provides electronic sanitary certificates mandatory for tracking goods and live animals: common veterinary entry document, CVED as defined in decision 2003/279/CE of the Commission of 15/04/2003 for products (CVED P) and in regulation 2004/282/CE of the Commissionof the 18/02/2004 for CVED for live animals (CVED A).

- TRACES notifies, by sending an electronic message, from the departure point to the transfer point and the arrival point informing that a consignment is arriving. Similarly, every concerned point sends a message to others points which enables a well developed follow up of the consignment (goods or animals) movement.

- TRACES provides the ad-hoc European Union legislation, manages the Third country establishment list which is the establishment agreed for importing into the UE, and keeps on file the rejected consignments and the reason for rejection.

- Economic operators are able to start the process electronically by filling in the first part of the mandatory certificates for importing goods and animals into the UE.

- The next step of TRACES will be electronic certification without any paper work.

About TRACES on EU websites:

TRACES system in "Veterinary checks, Animal health rules, Hygiene of food, system TRACES"

The TRACES page in europa.eu. website.

Please note, the legal basis for exchange of goods or live animals among third countries and the UE is a paper certificate, even if the decision 2004/292/CE says it mandatory for Member States and economic operators to use TRACES since 31 December, 2004.

History

Before TRACES, the European Union tried twice to create a computer-based network dedicated to food safety and animal health for exchange of goods and live animals.

ANIMO network

ANIMO stands for "ANimal Movement system": computer-based tracking of animal movements, the SHIFT network is devoted to goods movements.

The directive of Council 90/425/CEE about veterinary and zootechnical checks says, art 20, Alinea 1:

"The Commission shall introduce, in accordance with the procedure laid down in Article 18, a computerized system linking veterinary authorities, with a view, in particular, to facilitating the exchange of information between the competent authorities..." The directive of the Council 91/496/CEE of 15 July, 1991 defined the veterinary checks to be carried out on third countries imported goods.

Following these directives of the Council, the Commission began to create the structure of TRACES. The decision of the Commission 91/398/CEE of 19 July, 1991 is in relation to a computer-based network linking veterinary authorities (ANIMO).

The Commission launched an invitation to tender in December 1991. Decision of the Commission 91/638/CEE of 3 December, 1991 concerns the designation of the host centre.

The decision of the Commission 92/373/CEE of 2 July, 1992 states in art 1: "The host centre of the company Eurokom, Avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée 1, B-1050 Bruxelles, is designated as the common host centre for the computerized network 'Animo'."

The decision of the Commission 92/486/CEE of 25 September, 1992 states how the common host will work with Member States.

The decision of the Commission 93/70/CEE of 21 December, 1992 specifies the message ANIMO will send using its own coding system. This coding system is different from the ISO code used by the World Customs Organisation and now in use in TRACES.

Finally the décision de la Commission 2002/459/CE of 4 June, 2002 defines the list of ANIMO units and repeals Decision 287/2000/CE.

ANIMO was used by Member States, Switzerland, Norway; Iceland, Andorra, San Marin, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus. ANIMO was only able to send messages and lacked interactivity with veterinary authorities.

We must remember that at the beginning of the 90's, the internet and all other networks were not common tools; this may explain why people were so reluctant to use it.

ANIMO was able to trace the origin of animals and goods in case of problems and to warn veterinary authorities providing, of course, that data had been introduced into the system which was not systematically the case.

The system was lacking a database on European legislation about importation from third countries, the result was a loss of time at border inspection posts, waiting for the proper legislation to be found…or more delicate the entry into the UE of a forbidden animal.

ANIMO was devoted only to live animals.

This system did not keep track of data concerning rejected animals or goods; a rejected consignment was able to try at another entry point at another border post.

More generally, ANIMO did not keep track of movements of animals or goods in the UE or importation.

For all these reasons the Commission tried to develop another tool: the network "SHIFT".

SHIFT network

SHIFT stands for "System to assist with the Health controls of Import of items of veterinary concern at Frontier inspection posts from Third countries".

The need for developing SHIFT is expressed in the decision 88/192/CEE of the Council decision 88/192/CEE of the Council of 28 March, 1988. Art 1 states that: "The Commission shall be responsible for drawing up a programme for the development of computerization of veterinary importation procedures (Shift project)."

More accurately the decision 92/438/CEE of the Council decision 92/438/CEE of the Council specifies the computerization of veterinary import procedures (SHIFT project) and is ammending Directives 90/675/EEC, 91/496/EEC and 91/628/EEC and Decision 90/424/EEC, and repeal Decision 88/192/EEC. Again this Decision gives the Commission the responsibility of organising a computer network.

SHIFT was designed to electronically manage the sanitary aspects of animal and animal products coming from third countries. It was divided into three parts:

- CIRD SHIFT

CIRD: "community import requirement database", this database dispatches to veterinary officials in border inspection posts the legislation necessary for imports. This part was also supposed to control the valid data of consignments. The impossibility of updating this database in real time constituted the major failure of the system.

. - RCS SHIFT

RCS: "rejected consignments system"

All information regarding rejected animals and animal products is kept in a database to make sure a rejected consignment would not try to enter through the border somewhere else. This part worked as a prototype in Greece and Belgium.

- LMS SHIFT

LMS: "list management system" this part was managing the third countries establishments list. These establishments were approved to import into the EU by the veterinary authority of their country and listed by the Commission in this database.

SHIFT has never operated except partially in Belgium and Greece. The two systems, ANIMO and SHIFT, failed to provide a useful tool to strengthen food safety and secure animal health in Europe and to help build the single European market.

The reasons of failure

The failure happened not only because of a technical defect,

- Members States were probably not ready to delegate responsibility in such sensitive matter as food safety and public health.

- The world wide web (or on a smaller scale the European wide web…) was not in current use at that time and even professionals did not understand its full potential.

- Possibly the people at border inspection posts were not aware and not concerned about being part of a national and European safety network.

- The Commission itself was mildly enthusiastic and was waiting until the beginning of the 21st century to start development.