TRACES
TRACES ( English TRAde Control and Expert System ) is a database system introduced by the European Union (EU) on April 1, 2004 , with which all animal traffic within the EU and from and to the EU is recorded. The basis is the decision 2003/623 / EC of the European Commission of August 19, 2003 on the development of an integrated IT system for the veterinary sector.
The aim of the system is to better network the work of the veterinary authorities in order, for example, to find potential carriers of animal diseases after an outbreak of an animal disease in other herds. The system also contains a list of companies in non-EU countries that are allowed to export products of animal origin to the EU. TRACES replaces the previously used ANIMO ( ANImal MOvement ) system.
In the EU internal market, animal movements are entered online directly by the sending company. This sends the information to the responsible veterinary authority, where it is validated and sent to the recipient of the animals and the central register in France.
preamble
With the progress of modern veterinary medicine and food hygiene, states have gradually built up veterinary control structures parallel to the customs structures since the end of the 19th century: the border inspection posts (BIPs). These structures are intended to guarantee the safety of products of animal origin when they are imported and serve to prevent animal diseases (epizooties) and animal diseases ( zoonoses ) that can be transmitted to humans .
As part of its first pillar, the European Union investigated the feasibility of a Europe-wide computer network for food safety and animal health in the 1990s in order to be able to meet the double challenge - deepening internal market and consumer protection.
TRACES was put into operation in April 2004 to replace the old ANIMO and SHIFT networks.
Definition of the TRACES network
TRACES stands for TRAde Control and Expert System , this acronym is intended to emphasize traceability as a core element of the system in food safety. TRACES is a veterinary and animal welfare network that monitors the transport, import and export of products of animal origin and live animals. In the General Directorate for Health and Consumers, Directorate D, Unit D.1, the TRACES department is responsible for operations. The founding act for the TRACES network is Commission Decision 2003/623 / EC of 19 August 2003.
This decision contains an explicit reference to the Internet by mentioning Directive 1999/93 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council in paragraph 3 of the recitals:
"[...] the security of electronic data exchange and trust in it are to be established and its use by the national authorities for communication with one another and with citizens and economic operators should be facilitated."
In the spirit of this directive, TRACES connects the veterinary authorities of the Member States and the participating third countries both at the level of the central administrations and at that of the decentralized control units (e.g. border inspection posts) with economic operators via the Internet.
TRACES is a multilingual network that covers all official EU languages. It holds the health certificates that accompany the transport of animals and animal products in electronic form: Joint veterinary document for the import of animal products (CVEDP) according to Commission Decision 2003/279 / EC of April 15, 2003 and the joint veterinary document for the import of Animals (GVDET) according to Regulation 2004/282 / EC of the Commission of February 18, 2004.
In the case of the transport of products or live animals, TRACES notifies all stopover points and the destination in electronic form, starting from the place of origin. Everyone involved in a transport also informs the other parties involved, so that the process can be followed seamlessly.
TRACES has also taken over the function of the SHIFT system, in particular the references to applicable European legal texts, the management of the list of third-country companies that are approved for export to the EU and the storage of the rejected shipments, including the reasons for the rejection, the latter about a fraudulent import to prevent another inspection body. Economic operators can fill in the first section of the document themselves and thus start the electronic process of the certification, which is mandatory for the transport of animals and products.
The European institutions have not discovered the Internet for their professional purposes until late, but with TRACES the Commission is anticipating purely electronic administration and paving the way for completely paperless procedures.
The legislation regulating the transport of animals and products only mentions a physical certificate on paper. Although Commission Decision 2004/292 / EC of March 30, 2004 prescribes the use of TRACES by Member States and economic operators from December 31, 2004, a transport must always be accompanied by a paper version of the certificate.
history
Before TRACES, the European Union tried twice to introduce a computerized network for food safety and the monitoring of animal transports and the transport of products of animal origin.
The ANIMO network
ANIMO stands for “ANImal MOvement system” and was a computer-aided system for tracking animal transports. The SHIFT system was intended for the transport of goods. Council Directive 90/425 / EEC of 26 June 1990 on the regulation of veterinary and zootechnical controls in intra-Community trade in live animals and products with regard to the internal market states in Article 20 paragraph 1:
“In accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 18, the Commission shall set up a computerized system to network the veterinary authorities, in particular to facilitate the exchange of information between the competent authorities of the regions in which the health certificates or documents accompanying animals and animal products were issued and the competent authorities of the Member State of destination. "
Council Directive 91/496 / EEC of 15 July 1991 laid down the basic rules for veterinary checks on animals entering the Community from third countries. Council Directive 97/78 / EC of 18 December 1997 laid down the basic rules for veterinary checks on products imported into the Community from third countries.
As a result of these Council guidelines, the Commission defined the ANIMO information system at the beginning of the 1990s. This happened in several directives and decisions of the Commission, in particular through the decision 91/398 / EEC of the Commission of 19 July 1991 on an IT network for the association of veterinary authorities (ANIMO). In its decision 91/638 / EEC of 3 December 1991 on the designation of a common server center for the computerized network ANIMO, the Commission published a call for tenders.
In its decision 92/373 / EEC of 2 July 1992 the Commission designated a server center, the company EUROKOM (avenue de la Joyeuse Entrée 1, B-1050 Brussels). Commission Decision 92/486 / EEC of September 25, 1992 laid down the modalities of cooperation between the ANIMO server center and the Member States.
The Commission Decision 93/70 / EEC of December 21, 1992 specified the codification of the ANIMO communication. This codification differed from the one currently used in the TRACES system, which actually corresponds to the code of the combined nomenclature of the World Customs Organization .
Commission Decision 2002/459 / EC of June 4, 2002 established the list of entities in the computerized network ANIMO and repealed Decision 2000/287 / EC.
The ANIMO network was used by the then Member States as well as Switzerland, Norway, Iceland, the principalities of Andorra and San Marino, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus. ANIMO did nothing else than send its message from the veterinary authority of the place of origin to that of the place of destination, with a copy being sent to the authorities of the Member States crossed. This system lacked interactivity and was basically just a secure communication between the veterinary authorities of the participating states.
The ANIMO system made it possible to trace animals or products and, in the event of a problem, could warn the veterinary authorities of the destination and possibly carry out controls. Of course, this only worked if the relevant data had actually been entered correctly, which was not always the case. In particular, there was no database on the current legislation regarding imports from third countries. The search for the consolidated legislation often led to unnecessary waiting times and sometimes even to the importation of unapproved animals.
The ANIMO system did not have a memory of the rejected consignments, so that such a consignment could possibly be imported through another border inspection post. In addition, no other statistically usable data on the transport of animals or products were kept. For this reason, and because ANIMO only concerned the transport of animals, the Commission developed another network for importing animal products: the SHIFT network.
The SHIFT network
SHIFT is an acronym for System to assist with the Health controls of Import of items of veterinary concern at Frontier inspection posts from Third countries 'Assistance system for health controls of imports of animal health importance at the border inspection posts ' . The need to develop such a system is recorded in Council Decision 88/192 / EEC of March 28, 1988. Article 1 states: "The Commission shall prepare a program for the development of the automation of veterinary import procedures (SHIFT project)."
The following Council Decision 92/438 / EEC of July 13, 1992 on the computerization of veterinary procedures at import (SHIFT project), amending Directives 90/675 / EEC, 91/496 / EEC and 91/628 / EEC and Decision 90/424 / EEC and the repeal of Decision 88/192 / EEC (92/438 / EEC) specified the whole thing. This decision confirms the responsibility of the Commission for the organization of such a system.
At the beginning, the ANIMO network was designed for the IT management of the health aspects of imports of animals and products of animal origin from third countries and consisted of the following three parts:
- CIRD SHIFT : Community Import Requirement Database 'Database for (legal) requirements for imports' , should provide the official veterinarians at the border inspection posts with the current legislation. This part of the system should also be used to verify the information pertaining to the shipments. The impossibility of timely updating of legislative data was one of the main reasons for the failure of the system.
- RCS SHIFT : Rejected Consignement System 'System for rejected consignments' , should store the details of consignments rejected at the border inspection posts centrally in order to prevent a consignment that has once been rejected from possibly being imported through another border inspection post. This had worked as a prototype in Greece and Belgium.
- LMS SHIFT : The List Management System is a database that keeps lists of third-country companies that are approved for export to the EU. This database is continuously updated depending on the development of the legislation. This function has been transferred to the TRACES system.
Unfortunately, the SHIFT system only worked as a prototype. The incomplete implementation of the two systems - ANIMO and SHIFT - could not guarantee the implementation of the demands of the first pillar of the Union: to strengthen the security of health controls - especially at the external borders of the EU - and thus to contribute to the formation of a common market.
Causes of Failure
The causes of the failure of these attempts are diverse and not only to be seen in the technical inadequacies.
- The Member States may not have been ready to delegate some of their responsibilities in the sensitive area of animal and public health. One must not forget that the official veterinarian at the border inspection post has the responsibility to let in a shipment or not.
- At that time (at the beginning of the 1990s) a Europe-wide, let alone global, computer network was inconceivable.
- At the local level of the border inspection posts, there was even less awareness of a national and European structure than it is today.
- The Commission itself has waited for the beginning of the 21st century to restart the process with greater human and technical effort.
TRACES - the beginning
At the beginning of the 21st century, the commission had to acknowledge the failure of the ANIMO and SHIFT projects. The systems had proven unusable during the swine fever outbreak in the late 1990s. In the European Parliament's report A5-0396 / 2000 of 13 December 2000, paragraph 23, it says: “[…] calls on the Commission to ensure that the ANIMO system (animal movement notification system) is managed and developed under the full control of the Commission will "and in cauda venenum section 24:" [...] regrets that three years after considerations about an assessment of the ANIMO system were still no improvements have been introduced ".
In 2002, following the foot-and-mouth disease outbreak , the European Parliament once again called on the Commission to “[…] take rapid action to improve the existing system for monitoring animal transports within the EU (.Animo. System) [to] seize. "
Commission Decision 2003/24 / EC of December 31, 2002 provides for the Commission to develop a new information system, as does Decision 2003/623 / EC of August 19, 2003 on the development of an integrated IT system for the veterinary sector. Article 1: “As part of the establishment of a uniform IT system called TRACES, as provided for in Decision 2003/24 / EC, which combines the functions of the ANIMO and SHIFT systems, the Commission is developing the new ANIMO system and making it available to the Member States . ”This“ making available ”already expresses the future character of the system. The new network should integrate the functions that were already provided in ANIMO and SHIFT:
- an interactive, internet-based architecture between the national veterinary control structures (in particular border control posts), the central veterinary authorities of the Member States, the European Commission and the veterinary control structures of the third countries and their central veterinary authorities;
- access to EU legal texts;
- a storage of the data of the rejected products and animals;
- an administration of the companies that are approved for export to the EU.
In contrast to ANIMO, the TRACES network is implemented with EU internal staff without using an external data center. The Commission's Directorate-General for Health and Consumers is responsible for TRACES.
functionality
NB TRACES also works in 22 EU languages in Chinese, Croatian, Icelandic, Norwegian and Russian. TRACES combines the following functions:
Issuance of certificates
TRACES provides, in electronic form, with the option of printing, the animal health certificates that must accompany the transport of products or live animals within the European Union. The following certificates accompany the transports in both electronic and paper form along the entire transport route:
- Veterinary certificates for intra-community trade in accordance with Commission Regulation 599/2004 of March 30, 2004;
- Veterinary certificates to the EU in accordance with Commission Decision 2007/240 / EC of April 16, 2007;
- Common veterinary document for the importation of animals according to Commission Regulation 282/2004 of February 18, 2004 and for products according to Commission Regulation 136/2004 of January 22, 2004.
notification
A direct exchange of information within the meaning of Council Directive 90/425 / EEC of June 26, 1990, in particular Articles 4, 8, 10 and 20. Article 20 paragraph 1 states:
“In accordance with the procedure referred to in Article 18, the Commission shall set up a computerized system to network the veterinary authorities, in particular to facilitate the exchange of information between the competent authorities of the regions in which the health certificates or documents accompanying animals and animal products were issued and the competent authorities of the Member State of destination. "
At each stage of the transport, e.g. B. when crossing into the EU via a border inspection post (BIP), an electronic message is sent from TRACES to those involved in the transport. If a risk to public or animal health is identified during an inspection, a notification is also triggered via the RASFF alarm system .
Management of the third country establishment list
On the basis of Regulation 854/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council of April 29, 2004, lists of third country companies approved for export to the EU are kept. Before being added to the list, these companies go through an approval procedure that is carried out by the veterinary authorities in their country together with the European Commission. The establishment list is available on the EU website and is integrated into the TRACES system. Thus, when filling out a certificate on the screen, a company can simply be selected from a menu.
Decision support
TRACES provides the applicable legal texts. The necessary physical or intensified controls, in accordance with Commission Decision 94/360 / EC of May 20, 1994, are also displayed depending on the circumstances.
Traceability
Traceability is the core element of the system. TRACES saves the data of all imports or movements within the EU of animal products or live animals, this allows immediate and real-time tracking of the transport route in the event of a major problem. In this way, TRACES also stores all information on rejected shipments, including the reason for the rejection.
Other similar systems around the world
Supranational networks
AFSIS: ( A sian F ood S ecurity I nformation S ystem ) is a system of the ASEAN countries as well as Japan, China and Korea. This system is based on the collection and exchange of information on food safety and is roughly the equivalent of a future TRACES network.
FTA
- Free trade agreements between states with public health implications:
- MERCOSUR : South American Common Market;
- UNASUR : Union of South American Nations, founded May 23, 2008, pursues more or less the same goals as the EU;
- ALENA is just a free trade agreement. Health aspects are laid down in Articles 712/713/714 without mentioning a common network.
These organizations serve the free trade between states, but are not yet ready to introduce a computerized information system like TRACES. Despite the customs agreement, this slows down the flow of trade.
Footnotes and References
- ↑ a b Decision 2003/623 / EC of the Commission
- ↑ Directive 99/93 / EC of the European Parliament and of the Council
- ↑ Decision 2003/279 / EC of the Commission
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 282/2004 of the Commission
- ↑ a b c List of third country companies
- ↑ Decision 2004/292 / EC of the Commission
- ↑ Directive 90/425 / EEC
- ↑ Council Directive 91/496 / EEC
- ↑ Directive 97/78 / EC
- ↑ Decision 91/398 / EEC of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 91/638 / EEC of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 92/373 / EEC of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 92/486 / EEC of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 93/70 / EEC of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 2002/459 / EC of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 88/192 / EEC of the Council
- ↑ Decision 92/438 / EEC of the Council
- ↑ A5-0396 report / 2000 of the European Parliament
- ↑ paragraph 123 report A5-0405 / 2002.
- ↑ Decision 2003/24 / EC of the Commission
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 599/2004 of the Commission
- ↑ Decision 2007/240 / EC of the Commission
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 282/2004 of the Commission
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 136/2004 of the Commission
- ↑ Directive 90/425 / EEC
- ↑ Regulation (EC) No. 854/2004 of the European Parliament and of the Council
- ↑ Decision 94/360 / EC of the Commission