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Ranchers Have Beef With USDA Program To ID Cattle
Ponca City, We Love You writes "The NY Times reports that farmers and ranchers oppose a government program to identify livestock with microchip tags that would allow the computerized recording of livestock movements from birth to the slaughterhouse. Proponents of the USDA's National Animal Identification System say that computer records of cattle movements mean that when a cow is discovered with bovine tuberculosis or mad cow disease, its prior contacts can be swiftly traced. Ranchers say the extra cost of the electronic tags places an onerous burden on a teetering industry. Small groups of cattle are often rounded up in distant spots and herded into a truck by a single person who could not simultaneously wield the hand-held scanner needed to record individual animal identities. The ranchers also note that there is no Internet connection on many ranches for filing to a regional database. 'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen, an owner of Rainbow Meadow Farms. The notion of centralized data banks, even for animals, has also set off alarms among libertarians who oppose NAIS. One group has issued a bumper sticker that reads, 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon.' 'They can't comprehend the vastness of a ranch like this,' says Jay Platt, the third-generation owner of a 22,000 acre New Mexico ranch. 'This plan is expensive, it's intrusive, and there's no need for it.'"
From the summary: "'Lobbyists from corporate mega-agribusiness designed this program to destroy traditional small sustainable agriculture,' says Genell Pridgen"
It's true. When The Jungle was published, TR responded with the Pure Food and Drug Act, which regulated and inspected meat packing plants (he also went vegetarian for a little while, which, if you know TR, shows you how much he was affected by Sinclair's book).
Contrary to what many people might think, the large meat companies supported the act. It 1) Improved public perception of the safety of meat, increasing sales, 2) Opened up American meats to the European market and 3) Added significant costs to the industry, which put their smaller competitors out of business.
You can learn a lot from history.
I say let it go down. Regulate them into the dust. (Full disclosure, I abhor the meat industry.)
It's fair to have that opinion, but you do realize that a LARGE part of the economy is dependant on cattle. If you think the economy sucks now, let the "meat industry" (including dairy, fast food, grocery stores and numerous other) die.
Even if it all doesn't fall down like dominoes (and it would), you're talking about a lot of people losing their jobs, most of the physical area of the US falling into economic decay. Maybe you didn't mean to flamebait, but geez, what you're talking about is pretty terrible stuff in reality.
You assume far too much, out in the western US ranch country there is usually no communication services of any kind. I have a small (a few square kilometers) ranch in Nevada that is 20 miles from the next ranch (never mind a road), typical for western ranching operations. I get cellular reception -- one bar -- if I climb to the peak of the adjacent mountain, that several thousand extra feet gives me line-of-sight to an area near an Interstate highway 30-40 miles away.
There seems to be a presumption (1) that western ranches are the size of hobby farms, (2) that they are located anywhere near infrastructure, and (3) that free-range cattle is a tidy local pasture-and-barn affair instead of a horseback operation in remote canyons. In many parts of the western ranching areas, you don't even locate all of your cattle for the better part of a year.
Don't you realize that every violation of rights starts really really small?
Aside from the fact that my post entire post was essentially a set up for a gag involving people being tranqed and tagged on the street, I was serious when I said this isn't a violation of rights of any kind whatsoever. They're cows. Making them trackable is no more a violation of rights than zoologists tagging birds to track migrations and populations like they've been doing for a long time now. It's nothing like tracking people. And the "right" of the rancher to sell unregulated meat was lost a long time ago, thank goodness, because I'd like to have more assurance that I'm not going to get sick eating some beef than a Consumer Reports grade or a complaint-ridden web forum.
The enemies of Democracy are
I call BS on your BS. If we were talking about corporate feed lots it would be one thing, but a very significant percentage of the US beef herd is raised by independent cattle producers on open range in very sparsely populated country. It can take months to find all of your cattle to tag them in the first place, so it is very easy to "lose" cattle without noticing. In fact, the law in the ranching areas I am familiar with is that you only have rights to your free-range cattle if you can find and tag them within the first year after birth, after which they enter the public domain (first person to tag them owns them). It is not at all uncommon for me to find a rancher's untagged cattle in one of my canyons.
Beef ranching in the western US does not work the way you think it does. Much of the basic logistics of it have not changed much since the 19th century.
(Speaking as someone who works within one of the largest meatworks company in Australia, so each to their own)
Over here in Australia, we have had a National Livestock Identification Scheme (NLIS) RFID ear tags on cows for about the last 3 yrs.
The tags themselves work out to about $3.50AU ea. The growers were a bit unhappy at the start but it was compulsory so they got over it. Im sure prices were jacked up accordingly to cover the cost.
All the info is stored in a goverment owned db and at time of slaughter or sale can checked to confirm that the cow was free from disease.
The most expensive part is probably the RFID wands as there is only one company in Australia that specializes in RFID wands for the cattle industry.
Anyway, in the end. The small growers are still alive and doing well. Nothings really changed, except now there is a tracking system for cows to ensure quality meat.
Actually, the giant farms would probably not be as difficult. Large farms have more people, many of whom probably do not work as much as the few people per small farm. They have economies of scale on larger farms, which means that if there is another administrative hurdle to cross, they already have a person on staff to deal with it, and it is probably their job. On a small farm, administration is time taken out of the other work time of the operational staff of the farm. Even a small amount of additional administration and regulation can turn into an issue.
For those of you who understand the concepts, this regulation basically represents a flat percentage of extra effort; in taxes, we call that a regressive tax. You must spend the same amount of time to tag a steer on a small farm as a large farn, but like the poor vs. rich in the tax scenario, the rich can absorb a flat percentage without being really hurt by it.
Now I am not saying that the tagging idea is impossible, but somehow you will have to account for the extra adminstrative time required out of people who already work from dawn to dusk and beyond every day just staying afloat. Their position is 100% valid, even if you think its "not all that expensive". Work is work, tags cost a unit price, and God help you if your report on so-and-so shipment was messed up, because it's all your fault when the government comes knocking to fine you.
A lot of people in the US get upset with mega-corporations, but they forget that massive regulation requires an investment of time from the regulated. That means that it becomes yet another reason that mega-corporations take over. They can absorb these costs. Their bottom line may be affected, but it's merely a percentage. On a small farn that same percentage might be a significant portion of whatever small profits that they eke out. Small farms are *not* efficient, anyone who understands economics should know that. They provide some advantages, but many of those advantages (like a free and hard working population who are landowners) are intangibles that no one really factors in.
I used to drive out to farms when I worked with my grandfather, who sold goods to farmers. Many people here would be shocked by what I saw in terms of the sacrifices that these people have to make to simply do what their families have been doing for centuries. These are people who don't need something else on their backs making their life even harder. Not if we don't want to see them or their children sell out to the agribusiness and move away.
People think that all of these programs are no-brainers because "of course we want to track every animal to prevent CJ disease", but take a look at who is doing that work before you call it a win. Some of you are effectively calling some of the hardest working people on Earth "lazy" or "greedy". The concept of people sitting in their ergonomic chairs and making those sorts of statements sickens me from the pure ignorance that it represents.
The "small rancher" is a myth, just like the "family farm".
On what grounds do you say something so daft? Living in Georgia, I get all of my buffalo meat from a rancher with thirty head of buffalo in exchange for a little computer work every couple of weeks. If he offers beef, sometimes I'll take a little longhorn. Another friend gives me angus by the truckload because his parents have a small farm in Tennessee with a few dozen cattle. I know a lot of people with small active farms and ranches and do not personally know anyone who works for one of the big outfits. When I was a kid, we had a few hundred head of holsteins on our farm and were able to break even with milk sales. The truck came by from farm to farm to farm to fill up at these little dairies. Corporate "farming" may be the mainstay of our food supply, especially in the poultry industry, but please do not be so ignorant about this. The buffalo rancher was breaking even at $2.50/pound for ground bison but with the USDA inspection, he already has to mark it up to $4.00/pound after taking into consideration both inspection and transportation. Any such regulation on cattle does hurt the small man because not only does he not own his own slaughterhouse, but he has to transport his cattle elsewhere and has to deal with a lot more overhead per capita than the corporation.
Besides being one step away from tagging humans--say prisoners guilty of certain crimes--this program would unquestionably harm the many small farms out there.
This act (NAIS) not only includes cattle, but chickens, pigs, goats, sheep, i.e. _any_ and _all_ farm animals. People have been fighting this act, and trying to raise awareness on it for over a year.
Wherever you go, there you are.