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Stockmen don’t cotton to livestock registration
USDA says program could
stem disease, bioterror
By Pam Zubeck,
Colorado Springs Gazette
– Tuesday – November 7, 2006
The government’s drive to
register places that house livestock to guard against disease and bioterrorism
is meeting resistance from stockmen.
The Department of Agriculture is pushing everyone from farmers to veterinarians
to register. Officials say the information would help them slow or halt the
spread of mad cow disease, avian flu or another killer infection.
It’s the first step toward individual animal identification and tracking, which
the government says will speed a response to disease or bioterrorism targeting
food supplies.
The program, launched in 2004, would standardize and widen animal identification
programs to all livestock species and poultry. The goal is to equip officials
with tools to identify diseased livestock and where they’ve been within 48 hours
of discovery. But some fear it will become mandatory.
For Rob Alexander, a cow-calf rancher in Elbert County, the program could be
just another drain on his already wafer-thin profit margin.
“I have to buy this new tool to put a tag in the ear, and then I have to buy new
software to scan the tags,” he said. “Will it make my life more complicated?
Yes. Am I excited about that? No. To the producer who’s on the short end of the
stick, this smells like a rat, because most of the burden is going to be on us.”
Alexander, who hasn’t registered his ranch, is a Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo
Foundation board member and wonders how the program will affect rodeos and the
contractors that provide rodeo stock. He’s also curious about its impact on
county and state fairs; his daughter shows 4-H calves.
Joel Franz of Burlington, a cattle rancher for 50 years, is like many of his
friends. He hasn’t signed up his ranch and takes issue with a voluntary program
he said pushes registration through 4-Hers and with bribes. Some states offer
cash to register, he said.
“There is no law that says it has to be done,” he said. “Not by anybody.”
The USDA wants 25 percent of all premises registered by year’s end and 100
percent by January 2009. Only about 13 percent of the 36,000 sites in Colorado
have signed up, a figure comparable to most other states, said Gwen Bosley, the
state program’s communications and marketing manager.
In El Paso County, 149 have registered, and in Teller County, 19 have signed up.
The 36,000 include any site where animals are housed — sale barns, veterinary
clinics, slaughter houses, rendering plants, farms and ranches. Animals the
government wants to track include horses, sheep, hogs, poultry, cattle, bison,
llamas, alpacas, goats and elk and deer raised on hunting ranches.
While the government and producers have discussed animal identification for 20
years, the Sept. 11 attacks and the homeland security concerns that followed
have increased the urgency.
Bill Gray, former president of the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association, said the
group supports the ID program.
“We need to have a way to track cattle,” said the Crowley County stockman. He
noted that 14 states, including Colorado, have branding laws and that half of
those enforce them.
Noting that 40,000 cattle are moved by truck in Colorado on any given day, Gray
said, “The different threats we have, we just have to be able to find out where
a cow was born and where she spent her life.”
After cattle are sold at a Colorado sale barn, they can be in 14 states within
48 hours, he said.
But many have balked at participating because they don’t trust the USDA, said
Bill Bullard, a former South Dakota cow-calf producer who heads the
Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America.
“There is a lack of trust that producers have with the USDA, and a lot of that
stems from the policies they’ve been pushing that have turned out to be
detrimental to the cattle industry,” he said. Among those are not requiring
imported cattle labeling by country of origin and failure to impose protections
for the U.S. cattle industry in trade agreements.
The stockgrowers group, a nonprofit based in Billings, Mont., with 18,000
members, doesn’t yet oppose the registration program. But it’s against
individual animal identification, seen as the next step, Bullard said.
He said the program’s data in the wrong hands could hurt producers by allowing
market manipulations based on how many cattle are ready for slaughter at any
given point in time or location.
“If this were put in the hands of meat packers,” he said, “it would give them a
distinct advantage to negotiate prices for cattle.”
Bullard also noted electronic eartagging tests have been “fraught with errors
and inaccuracies,” with tags lost in fences and brush and devices
malfunctioning.
Lastly, Bullard doesn’t agree that the best way to secure the food supply is
from within the nation’s boundaries.
“The highest risk lies with importation of animals that originate in countries
that have disease problems,” he said. “Our first defense should be at our
borders.”
To register, www.COanimalID.org or call 877-842-0102.
http://www.gazette.com/display.php?id=1326235&secid=1
CONTACT THE WRITER:
636-0238 or
pam.zubeck@gazette.com.
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