Veterinary portal

Veterinary portal

David Sparks Ph.D.
David Sparks Ph.D.
Dr. Scott Leibsle and I’m the state Veterinarian and administrator of the division of Animal Industries at the Idaho State Department of Agriculture. Dairy and beef are Idaho’s largest agricultural industries. Idaho dairy alone is a two billion dollar a year business, and Idaho ranks third among U.S. states for dairy production. That’s a lot of animals to test for disease and keep track of, so three years ago they transitioned from a paper system that used the mail, to an electronic Animal Disease Traceability Program.

“So this is the portal that the practicing veterinarians will log into and submit all of their regulatory documents,” said Leibsle.

“So with the previous system that was in place it was all paper based. We would have to go through file cabinet after file cabinet to try and find a movement document or a testing document to understand and learn where an animal’s been, when was it there and how many different animals have potentially been exposed to it. So we were fortunate in 2018 we received an allocation from the Idaho legislature in conjunction with the Brand Broad, and each of our agencies built an electronic database to manage that. So now what would’ve taken days or weeks to identify the relevant documents to prove where an animal’s been and when, we can do that now in a manner of seconds.”

“We can look at different reports like where’s the majority of the trich testing being done. That’s this graph up here, by county…”

“I do want to make sure I remind anyone that all of this data is secured and protected. This is not made available to anyone outside of the agency.”

Leibsle says they often work with the livestock industry.

Previous ReportBarley and health
Next ReportOpening the Lab