No Mandatory Animal ID

Stockgrowers urge producers to be wary of animal ID plan

The South Dakota Stockgrowers Association reminds ranchers to carefully consider the U.S. Department of Agriculture's updated animal ID plan, which may be just as unfriendly to independent producers as the previous plan documents.

According to SDSGA Animal ID Committee Chairman Kenny Fox, Belvidere, many producers have recently read or heard USDA's latest public relations message--a guarantee that animal ID will be voluntary at the federal level. "What USDA isn't telling producers is this: the states are being asked to carry out the original wishes of USDA by implementing statewide mandatory animal ID programs." Fox says that USDA sent the "cooperative agreements" to the state animal health departments in late November and asked that they be signed and returned by Dec. 18, 2006.

So, I am not the only one worried about the Federal Governments aim here. They want the states to do the dirty work so they can appear to keep their hands clean. Do they really think that we out here in the country are this stupid?

We need to maintain our vigilance to our state Legislators to make sure they don't slip through a Pro-NAIS bill. Eternal vigilance is the key to our freedom.

Posted by Sarpy Sam in In The News at 04:40 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

A little review to start with. What is the purpose of NAIS and how is it going to be accomplished and who is the lead agency in it's implementation?

NAIS is a program by the USDA to allow them to track every animal in the US from birth to death. This is going to be done in cattle by means of an ear tag which even without the RFID technology will allow the USDA to figure out where a particular animal has been from the time of it's birth.

Why do I bring this up? I bring this up because of a little story about a South Dakota farmer and his experience with tagged cattle. It appears this farmer went to an auction yard and bought a bunch of calves to feed on his farm. He fed the calves until they were fat and then took them to the slaughter house for his pay day. He was in for a surprise though.

The packing plant would not pay him for seven head of his cattle and condemned the whole load of offal. Why? Because the seven head in question were Canadian cattle and were not supposed to be in this farmers possession.

"Unfortunately, it appears that USDA is not keeping track of the cattle being imported from Canada - under USDA's rules, these calves should never have been allowed to be sold in a South Dakota auction market. The Canadian officials apparently haven't been able to trace back the movements and origin of the calves, despite the official Canadian tags found in their ears." Fox said that USDA implemented a rule in 2005 to allow the importation of Canadian feeder cattle under 30 months of age, but only under very strict conditions.


"The cattle are supposed to enter the U.S. in sealed trucks and be transported directly to an identified feedlot. They are then to remain in the identified feedlot until they are hauled to a slaughter plant in a sealed truck," he said. "The fact that these calves showed up at a salebarn in South Dakota, were allowed to intermingle with U.S. cattle, and were not represented as Canadian cattle, indicates that USDA is not monitoring the very system it created.

The USDA wants to track all the cattle in the US, around 100 million cattle, and they can't even keep track of the small amount of cattle, I'm sure no more than 10 million, which come into the country from Canada. This is the perfect example of why NAIS is not going to work. The whole integrity of the program depends on the USDA being able to track these critters and here they prove on a smaller scale that they are incapable of doing just this.

Remember this example when the USDA official show up on your doorstep to sign you up for NAIS. Point out their proven inability to track cattle in the market system. See what they have to say about it. I bet they don't have an answer for you.

Posted by Sarpy Sam in In The News at 04:27 | Comments (0) | Trackbacks (0)

It's a new year and we still need to keep an eye on the NAIS situation. Maintaining this as a voluntary system is important to all who love freedom and keeping our eye on the government will hopefully maintain it this way.

Of particular interest to me is the recent USDA publication that studied the economic effects to producers of the BSE problems in the US.

Did BSE Announcements Reduce Beef Purchases?

Among the three markets examined—fresh beef, frozen beef, and frank-
furters—fresh beef provided the strongest case for an impact of the BSE
announcements. There is no evidence that the Canadian announcement
altered purchase patterns of fresh beef, but purchases during the first 2
weeks after the Washington State announcement were unusually low. Frozen
beef purchases fell only for the first week after the Washington State
announcement. Frankfurter purchases dropped in the second week following
each announcement, but purchases of no-beef frankfurters also fell,
suggesting that unrelated events were more likely responsible for the
decline.

The magnitude of responses in the market was difficult to estimate
precisely, but the duration was clear: within 2 weeks, consumers were
behaving exactly as they had before the announcements.

The reason I bring this study up is that it has a direct impact on NAIS. How? The driving force behind NAIS was to protect American producer from the economic impact of diseases like BSE. This shows the economic impact of BSE was close to zero. Within 2 weeks Americans were purchasing the same amount of Beef they were before the announcement of BSE. The only problem we have, and still have is our foriegn markets and even with NAIS there is no saying these markets would be open yet. South Korea is doing every thing it can to block US beef and NAIS wouldn't make one difference to this market.

This report just shows how unnecessary mandatory animal ID is. It might be useful in marketing in a voluntary system but I have yet to personally see that come about. The only information I have on an ID system is the buyer of my cattle would pay less for calves if they are ID'd. They cost him more money so he pays less for them. {sarcasm}Quite the advantage for me isn't it?{/sarcasm}

An ear tag never stopped a disease.

Posted by Sarpy Sam in In The News at 11:23 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0)