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.'"

Comments

A "teetering industry"?

[jim_v2000]

LOL

Re:A "teetering industry"?

[Anonymous Coward]

Markets don't work without transparency, if people are fine eating GMO fine, but they should be able to, but it shouldn't infringe on the right of other people to not eat it. I see no reason why beef is any different in that respect.

You do have a right to know where your beef comes from every step of the way...if you're willing to pay for it. If enough people buy meat that has been tracked, all ranchers will track their cows so as to remain competitive. THAT is how markets work (see the bulk of dairy products with "No Growth Hormones" labels on them). Not via whatever legislation the lobby of the month has flashed in front of a Senator on the golf course.

Re:A "teetering industry"?

[mishehu]

How much is one supposed to tip a cow when served milk? Does is the usual 15% sufficient?

---
To err is human, to muu, bovine.

Re:A "teetering industry"?

[Curunir_wolf]

CO2 is not a pollutant. We have real pollution we should be dealing with, that would actually have a deterministic impact on improving the environment. Instead, some want this giant new market for Wall Street to play around in that will most likely increase the US dependence on imports.

Then you're also supporting some huge new "track every edible product everywhere" scheme, which is nothing but a boon to giant corporate farming that will kill off farmer's markets and roadside vegetable/fruit stands (not to mention small sales at small farms). You know, place where you actually buy food from the people that pulled it out of the ground.

Sell crazy somewhere else. We've got all we need around here.

Re:A "teetering industry"?

[Talderas]

Not only does the Fed consider Intrastate commerce as affecting interstate commerce, they also believe production of goods for yourself also affects interstate commerce.

In Wickard vs Filburn, a 1942 SCOTUS case, which must be considered with the Great Depression in mind.

One of the New Deal programs was an act that limited the number of acres a farmer could devote to any one crop in order to regulate the prices of wheat so that they didn't swing so much.

Mr. Filburn had grown more than the amount of wheat permitted for private usage on his own farm. The wheat never entered any trades, let alone interstate trades, so that excess wheat was not to be covered by the law.

What's nice is that the Federal District Court that the case came up under ruled unanimously in Filburn's favor. What sickens me is that SCOTUS was 9-0 in overturning the District Court.

Re:A "teetering industry"?

[cayenne8]

True, but there are some states right now, TX and another one (Montana?) that are constructing laws to challenge this...something along the lines of handguns manufactured, stamped 'for in state sale/use only' or something, and defying any Federal gun regulations on the manufacture or sale of them. Should prove an interesting challenge.

Sigh.

[SatanicPuppy]

Nothing ever changes. This is the exact argument that they made in the 1900's when the FDA was first trying to reduce the number of human body parts that made it into canned meat: "Waaaaaa, you're going to put us out of business! Waaaaaaaa, no one could ever collect this much information!"

I call BS. If I stole a cow from one of those giant farms, the damn rancher'd be able to identify it in a second, but the instant you want to track something for public safety reasons, "there is no way they could ever collect that information."

Re:Sigh.

[scubamage]

You're an idiot if you think all ranchers have "those giant farms."

Re:Sigh.

[scubamage]

Did he work alone? Ever? I remember trying to single handedly round up cattle for transport, even to fairs, back when I was growing up. No way in hell I could get them in a wagon by myself, let alone scan them while trying to keep them loading on. Plus then of course you have to take into account the cost of the scanner, internet connectivity, consumables (tags), it IS a lot of administrative burden. A lot of farmers in our area have themselves, maybe one kid helping them, and that's it.

Re:Sigh.

[j. andrew rogers]

I call BS. If I stole a cow from one of those giant farms, the damn rancher'd be able to identify it in a second, but the instant you want to track something for public safety reasons, "there is no way they could ever collect that information."

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.

Re:Sigh.

[tnk1]

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.

Re:Sigh.

[sumdumass]

The article is wrong. Your supposed to scan them and report it before they leave your property. Under the law, if you sell a few head to your neighbor, you are required to scan and report it. If you take a bull to the neighbors for a little work, you have to report it.

If the animal goes anywhere other then where the government thinks it is, you have to report it.

Now you may think this is for tacking diseases, truth be told, the reason animals sit at feed lots is because they have to have a FDA regulated period of healthy time and if the farm isn't already FDA regulated, then the trip to the feed lots allow the monitoring required. This plan is more about the entire barter system and taxation in which small farmers trade stud services for fence mending on shared properties and so on. That is unless you take the animals to a non-FDA inspected processing facility. They want all of that recorded as income now do you can be taxed on it. The entire process does pose some serious technical issues too, My neighbor doesn't even know how to use a computer and has over 1000 head, I have roughly 35- soon to be 40. Swine is tracked also, for much of the same reasons.

Here is the funny part, there are already numbered tags on the animals which can be used to track them. There is no need for this program. The monitoring in the healthy period regulation can show when sick animals arrive. If that isn't working, then a RFID tag isn't going to fix it. This is nothing more then wanting to know exactly where the animals go so they can tax potential revenue sources even when the revenue is a bale of hay.

Re:Sigh.

[crmarvin42]

I understand what you are trying to say but you are misunderstanding the actual situation. The time and cost/animal to tag will be fairly uniform. Yeah the large operation may be able to buy tags for less/tag but the difference will be relatively minor. Especially since the smaller operations are already paying more for just about all of the input costs per animal.

Their point is only valid if you truely believe that there is some sort of benefit to society in their running a less efficient operation. Large operations have the benefits of scale, but what benefits do we get from the smaller operations? They can get away with avoiding a lot of the environmental and safety regulations that exist because the governement regulates the large operators more aggresively. Contrary to popular opinion, they are not safer, more sustainable, or healthier.

I don't believe that any of these people are greedy or lazy, instead I tend to think of them as being less ambitious or fortunate. They either haven't tried to expand to take advantage of greater economies of scale, or have been unable to. Either way, that doesn't remove the net benefit to society and their industry if this kind of animal tagging becomes routine, which IMO outweigh their desire to avoid compliance. I say this as a member of the agriculture industry, although admitedly not a farmer myself.

Re:Sigh.

[jayhawk88]

Here is the funny part, there are already numbered tags on the animals which can be used to track them. There is no need for this program. The monitoring in the healthy period regulation can show when sick animals arrive. If that isn't working, then a RFID tag isn't going to fix it. This is nothing more then wanting to know exactly where the animals go so they can tax potential revenue sources even when the revenue is a bale of hay.

That, and, I promise you this, some congressmen on an agricultural subcommittee has a brother in law (or he himself) with a sizeable investment in an RFID company. A company who, suprisingly, will be the front runner for providing the RFID tags should this ever come to fruition.

Re:Sigh.

[civilizedINTENSITY]

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.

So then maybe its about time?

Re:Sigh.

[crmarvin42]

I fail to see why a small operation should be allowed to opt out of health and safety regulations that everyone else is required to obey. You are apparently one of those (in my option misguided) people that confuse the freshness of locally grown food with being healthier & safer. It's ok, my mother is as well.

I don't know how things are run in Australia, but I've worked at small dairy farms in Massachusetts and Connecticut (Largest farm milked 110 cows at a time and the smallest milked ~25), and I can assure you that all sorts of things slipped by because there was not enough time in the day, or employees, or money to employ extra employees to take care of everything. I'm not knocking those farms, they did the best they could and I think did an adequate job. Even in 25-110 cow operations the larger farms had much more time to devote to managing their animals optimally. I now work at a University in the midwest that milks several hundred cows a day and the management of the animals is top notch despite the facilities being of an older less efficient design than most larger scale operations.

Smaller operators have more to do and less resources with which to do it. That means they are more likely to cut corners out of necessity. A good example is one of the farms I worked for in CT. They milked ~35-40 cows at a time and turned them out to pasture in between milkings, ideal right? This would fit into the idealized picture that we all have of the rural dairy farm. However, 6 out of 7 days each week the cows would be walked to pasture on the other side of a stream that ran through the farm. They would walk into the water and then stop to cool off, defecating almost to a cow (35-40 milking cows and 10-20 dry cows/heifers), directly in the water before moving on across to the far bank and the fresh pasture. You can get away with that on a small farm because regulators aren't looking at the little guys, and if their is a complaint about the fecal coliform counts in the local water supply, they'll focus on the bigger farm just down the road.

Large farms that are incorporated cannot be run like other large corporations. They exist in a market that is frequently unprofitable for everyone, through no fault of their own. Take hogs for example. The recent uproar over the unfortunately named "Swine Flu" has resulted in decreased demand for pork in the US (and probably much of the world). This has led to a decrease in the amount being paid for hogs at the processing plant, to a point where almost no one is making money off of their pigs. They are focusing on trying to lose as little money as possible while waiting for pork prices to rebound into a range that is once again profitable. But remember, if a pig hits market weight you have to send him for processing, you don't have the luxury of holding onto him and waiting because there are more sows farrowing, more piglets weaning, more pigs growing, and more pigs getting ready to enter the finishing barn that aren't going to stop eating and growing just because you want them to. In these situations they have to minimize losses while still preparing for the next profitable period. Short term profiteering of the sort large corporations are famous for is not feasible, because the fallout of that short sighted business plan will be insolvency in the future. Unlike the auto industry, no one comes in to bail out struggling dairy or swine farms. Instead they declare bankruptcy and then sell the land, animals and everything else to their neighbor. Eventually that neighbor that keeps buying the less competitive becomes a large enough farm that a large portion of the US no longer trusts him and wants him to fail in favor of his old neighbors that couldn't compete effectively. How on earth does that make sense.

Free range eggs probably taste better to you for one of 2 reasons. It's either all in your head, or the fact that the free range chickens get to eat a lot more bugs and dead chicken which actually changed the flavor of the eggs. Fre

Regulation

[ShakaUVM]

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.

Re:Regulation

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

It 1) Improved public perception of the safety of meat, increasing sales,

Forget perception. It improved the safety, and quality, of meat full stop.

The reality is that the food industry as a whole needs these regulations. Left to their own devices, food producers will quite happily sell us sawdust and animal faeces to eat, feed dead cows to other cows, and buy, sell and slaughter sick, dying and dead animals that have been hauled across continents. All for a few pennies extra.

BSE would not have happened if their was regulation of the kind of practices the meat industry was using. The Gros Michel banana would still be on shelves if anyone had had the sense to put a stop to the homogenisation in the fruit industry. Swine Flu's resistance to medication is the direct result of feeding battery farmed pigs anti-biotics instead of reducing pig density.

The food industry cannot, will not and should not ever be allowed to regulate itself. While microchip tags seem frivolously sophisticated for a task that plastic ear tags have accomplished successfully for years, the concept of cattle IDs is an appropriate measure to control disease, improve meat safety and generally keep a tighter leash on an industry that should never be allowed to roam freerange.

Re:Regulation

[pizzach]

If (relatively inexpensive) safety measures put all the mom and pop companies out of business, then they had no business being in business.

Fixed your quote for you. You can't hide that you hate everyone's parents now.

Re:Regulation

[wurble]

Umm, what does the Flu, a VIRUS, have to do with antibiotics, which are treatment for BACTERIAL infections?

Re:Regulation

[khallow]

If it's putting companies out of business, then it's not "relatively inexpensive", is it?

Re:Regulation

[crmarvin42]

Ok, where to start. Before addressing individual points. Anyone that uses words like "Poisonous Air" and "Super-incubators for viruses" is spreading FUD. No two ways about it. They have a political agenda, whether they admit it or not, and are obviously biased. The fact that you either were unwilling, unable to see that bias is rather frightening, but not uncommon. Now for your individual points.

Nutritionists can tell you (in fact one is right now) that the feeding of animal byproducts to other animals is routine. Dog food contains meat, as does chicken, and the meat in question is not the top cuts I can assure you. The cattle got BSE from eating rendered sheep byproducts, not other cattle. Sheep have a prion disease know as Scrapie, which in the >200 years that we've known about it has never before jumped from one species to another. In fact, disease transmission by protein, as opposed to bacteria, virus, or fungi was only discovered with the isolation of the prion protein involved in both diseases. This discovery was as almost as revolutionary as germ theory itself. You cannot reasonably expect people to predict that which has never happened before will suddenly happen.

There is no "Flu epidemic" in north america. The flu occasionally affects some herds, but in the 7 years I've been working where I have, we've only seen the flu once. It was not the "Swine Flu" that the media was losing their mind about either, it was H5N4 IIRC. AFAIK, there hasn't been a single case of the so called "Swine Flu" (ie H1N1) in any pigs north of the US, Mexican border. The disease was transmitted out of Mexico by Human-to-human contact. Honestly, how many people do you really believe bring their pigs with them when they travel to Europe, Australia and Asia when leaving Mexico?

Also, if barns were as bad as your obviously biased reference states, then the first farmer to turn on the god damn FAN would seen incredible improvements in health and production and put the rest of the industry out of business nearly over night. Pigs are mammals, just like us. If they cannot breathe or are surrounded by toxins all the time, then they won't grow. They'll end up dying before they get to market, and no one will make any money. Why people such as yourself are willing to believe that animals will somehow grow in conditions that are toxic to them is beyond me. Do you not understand basic fucking biology? If you'd ever have taken a swine management class (as I have) you'd know just how much time is devoted to teach how to calculate the necessary air exchange rates based on season, flooring style, square feet/pig and building style. We had a whole exam on that.

And before you go trotting out the old "Antibiotics" meme, stop right there. The only place I've seen antibiotics fed to pigs on a routine basis is in the weaning barn. weaning is very stressful for pigs, they are moving from a mostly sterile, liquid diet with highly digestible proteins and energy derived primarily from lipids to a diet that is no more sterile than the grass in your back yard, solid, containing a fair amount of indigestible proteins, and with energy derived primarily from carbohydrates. This causes the animal to switch both his internal digestive mechanisms, and deal with a sudden switch in the enteral bacteria colonizing the small and large intestine. All the antibiotics do is knock down the bad bugs long enough for him to make the transition smoothly and then are removed from the diet. Antibiotics are expensive and a small, sub-therapeutic does in the weanling diets will often prevent the need to use much larger therapeutic doses for a much longer period of time if the E. coli gets away from them and causes an outbreak of scours (diarrhea). Prior to the use of antibiotics in weanling diets, losses at this point were much higher than they are now, in fact we've never had higher weaning percentages before.

The USDA has NEVER labeled pigs that eat pigs as safe. The reason is Trichin

Well...

[Estanislao Mart�nez]

I think the ranchers oppose having their animals chipped because then it becomes too easy for the government to abuse its power and round their cattle up like cattle.

Hmmm.

[SatanicPuppy]

The cost of the rfids would be practically nothing. They have to give them their shots anyway (mmmmm, tasty growth hormone), so that's just one more.

The movement issue is more real, because the range on the readers is tiny, but we've all seen lab experiments where hackers read an rfid enabled card from 200 feet away with a cantenna, so I'm not inclined to believe this to be an unsolvable problem.

And the internet thing is a joke. The amount of actual data collected would be pretty small (in the grand scheme). Uploading it every week or so wouldn't be a huge burden.

Re:Hmmm.

[geekoid]

Yep, a reader mounted to where the cattle passes by as gthey load it onto the truck and an access database could easily do this from anyone with less then 200 head.

The data could be uploaded with a dial up connection in minutes. Is that too much? fine next time you drive to town use the connection at the library, or get together with all the ranchers and donate a 1 Mbit line to city hall, with he provision they get a terminal to themselves so there isn't a line to upload the data. Still too much? fine, use data packets from a ham radio to a receiver.

Still too much? fine, go out of business.

Re:Hmmm.

[Buelldozer]

What if "updating every week or so" meant driving 40 miles into town, one way, to use someone elses Internet connection? Now what if it's a verified blizzard outside with temperatures of 0F, 50MPH winds, and 10" of snow on the ground? What if your wife and kids are sick and there's no one else to get the chores done or help them out while you drive your happy butt 40 miles through a blizzard to send the government some bullshit data that the cattle ranchers in China don't?

My point is this, don't automatically assume an Internet connection is convenient or even available.

You likely live in an urban area and have no concept of how much free space there are in some of these cattle herding states. Like most people you're unable to step outside your own life experience and imagine the difficulties that someone else would have.

My next question is are we going to demand this for all IMPORTERS of beef or is this a burden that only good 'ol U.S. Ranchers are going to have to bear?

Re:Hmmm.

[networkBoy]

Uploading data, you are right, it is very small. A few hundred bits per cow is all that would be needed. Even a old 300 baud modem could upload all the data relatively quickly.

Except that this is a government program, so rather than a simple data format, tailored to the job, it will be WTF worthy XML from hell that has a 200:1 ratio of formatting overhead and spurious data that could be sent once and stored at the server, but will be sent every time. Further, rather than lumping the data like so:

<herd="some rancher">
        <head="cow number 1"/>
        <head="cow number 2"/>
        <head="cow number n"/>
</herd>

it will be along the lines of:

<herd="some rancher">
        <extra_crap_data=$putOneMegOfCrapHere/>
        <head="cow number 1"/>
</herd>
<herd="some rancher">
        <extra_crap_data=$putOneMegOfCrapHere/>
        <head="cow number 2"/>
</herd>
<herd="some rancher">
        <extra_crap_data=$putOneMegOfCrapHere/>
        <head="cow number n"/>
</herd>

-nB

Re:Let it collapse

[pavon]

You are an idiot who can't even RTFS. This regulation would hurt the small sustainable ranchers who are teetering on the edge of being able to compete, while benefiting the large-scale industry that you abhor.

Tracking

[Ohio Calvinist]

The difference is that if a person contracts a disease that is a public health risk, the person is generally able to tell physicians who he/she might have had contact with so that person can get treatment, possibily saving their life and slowing the disease spread. Cows can't tell investigators where they have been and who should be notified.

Regarding the cost, I can't imagine that this would be more expensive that the cost of destroying entire herds of cattle when one cow comes down with a confirmed or probable case of these diseases. Being able to isolate the infected could decrease the numbers needed to be destoyed saving money. The difference is that farms can claim the loss of the animal in insurance which is a sunk cost, versus a preventative cost. This would save money upstream as well in the form of smaller recalls to distributors, which seem to happen more and more frequently in the US.

Internet access isn't a good excuse as a low-bandwidth cellular scanner would be enough to report via SOAP web-service to whatever database; not to mention that every industry has costs-of-doing-business and this will/could be one of those things.

I haven't read enough to comment on the implementation of this plan but on the surface, I can't see why this wouldn't be a good idea from a public health perspective.

Re:Tracking

[Darkness404]

Regarding the cost, I can't imagine that this would be more expensive that the cost of destroying entire herds of cattle when one cow comes down with a confirmed or probable case of these diseases.

Its a risk many would prefer to take though. There is only a tiny risk that this might happen. On the other hand, for every cow you have you would need a microchip which would add a ton of costs. For a mega-farm this makes sense, for the average small rancher with 50 or so head of cattle, this only will send them into bankruptcy.

Re:Tracking

[Bunny Guy]

O.K - having just returned from my vacation in Oregon "cow country" (prospecting for sunstones), I can clue you in on what's wrong with your world view.

Having looked at the program - the information they are trying to gain is - where has the cow been, and what other livestock has it associated with. This means that you have to read the chip and report, every time an animal is moved. It may happen more frequently, but moves would happen at least from high to low pastures and back - because of the weather.

So you have lots of reads, sometimes on small numbers of cattle. For the collected information to be useful it's got to be timely. Most people don't appreciate the scale of even eastern Oregon (much less New Mexico - I've lived in both). This leads up to the next problem -

THERE IS NO CELLULAR ACCESS - there isn't cell access for 100 miles in any direction from where I was. Heck, even the 162.XX weather radio was inaudable (I'm a ham, too) So much for your "low cost cellular scanner". Sat Radio would work - know what an irridium set with data costs? Not cheap, and every hand moving cattle has to have one.

Basically, it's clear that this rule was proposed by people who don't have a clear picture of the area they are asking this to be applied to - much less of the processes of the people who would actually do it.

Re:Tracking

[j. andrew rogers]

Internet access isn't a good excuse as a low-bandwidth cellular scanner would be enough to report via SOAP web-service to whatever database; not to mention that every industry has costs-of-doing-business and this will/could be one of those things.

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.

Re:Tracking

[Bunny Guy]

SPOT - Nice system - I may have to get me one of those...

An adapted device could be hand-held and run on AA batteries. Just add the RFID scanner, rudimentary code to filter/format the data, and it's good.

Now, I'm an instrument developer by day, and I've built systems like that (more primitive tech, but when in New Mexico - shoot rockets...). I know what it takes to do that kind of integration -- If I was a rancher in the western U.S., before I agreed to anything - I'd want to see at least two vendors showing systems. Because of the radically lower demand (lots fewer ranchers than hikers) and the customization - add a zero to the price - so it's ~2000. *per ranch hand*. That fits right into the "they are tryin' to run us out" way of thinking.

That said, if I was wandering around out there, I'd like one... cool toy....

Re:Tracking

[jcnnghm]

You need to learn how to do a cost benefit analysis. There have only ever been 3 cases of mad cow disease in cows (1 of which was imported from Canada), and 3 in people (one of which contracted the disease while living in Saudi Arabia) in the United States since 1993. There were 104.8 Million head of cattle in the United States on July 1, 2007. So by your estimate, it will only cost $15.7B upfront, then another $15.7B every year. That's the equivalent of spending almost $84B per diseased cow, quite unnecessarily, since we're only detecting, on average, one diseased cow every 64 months. It makes no sense to piss away over $170B over the next 10 years when current measures are already effective.

Ridiculous paranoia

[Chris Burke]

'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon.'

Ha! As if. Look, we grant cattle no rights, so it's not infringing their rights to have them be tracked. So it's a far step from there to tracking humans. It's like saying "Squashing spiders with slippers today, squashing people with slippers soon'. It's nonsensical. Besides, the reason cows have no rights is because they aren't capable of even thinking about the concept of rights much less engaging in protests etc to gain them. So not only are they different morally, they're different practically because it's not like the government could just come and start tracking us all without us noticing and burning down the Capitol.

Hmm? What do you mean "what's that hanging from my ear?" Some piece of plastic with a number on it? Well so there is! Geeze, I don't remember getting my ear pierced, but I did get pretty drunk last Friday... I remember somebody in a suit pointing at me and then I felt like I wanted to lie down... But I must have gone into the tattoo and piercing parlor and gotten pierced. With a tacky and crappy earring too, that doesn't seem to want to come off... I hope I didn't get tattooed too... Oh geeze, what the hell?! "19273g"? What the hell kind of tattoo is that? Alright that's it, no more Friday night benders for me.

Now what was I saying? Oh yeah. Some people are so paranoid!

Re:Ridiculous paranoia

[Chris Burke]

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.

Re:Ridiculous paranoia

[Chris Burke]

There are so many ways you are being tracked already, the 'Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon" fear isn't paranoia, it's whistling in the dark.

Well there's only one thing that I know how to do well, and I've often been told that you can only do what you know how to do well -- and that's be you! Be what you're like. Be like yourself. And so I'm having a wonderful time but I'd rather be whistling in the dark.

Re:Let it collapse

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK YOU. I abhor your fucking vegetarians industry. Dumb fucks. Plants are living things too. Why stop there then? Nothing, and I mean nothing, not even religious zealots, piss me off more than vegetarians. EAT MOAR CHIKUN bitches. And before you mod this TROLL, read what I'm saying. Its true.

Re:Let it collapse

[davester666]

Just like testing all cows for MCD would also destroy the industry, because any positive would kill exports and greatly impact domestic consumption.

So we only test a small percentage of pre-selected cows and get no positive results.

Problem solved.

And since we know in advance that the cows won't test positive, there is no reason to tag them.

Re:Dear Slashdot Editors,

[mano.m]

I don't think they're going to be cowed down.

Give the cows cell phones.

[w3woody]

"Tracking cattle now, tracking you soon." Too late; I already have a cell phone. I'm already being tracked.

The Farmers are Right

[Spacepup]

In this case the farmers are right. The cattle are branded with a unique brand so the rancher knows who it belongs to. In addition, cattle are given an eartag so that the slaughter houses can tell where they came from. Cattle comes from two sources...large industrial like feedlots where the cattle are crowded into a small area and fed grain ...or on ranches where they go free range and graze on grasses. Since a large operation would have maybe 1000 head of cattle, it can be presumed that from the ear tags, if a slaughtered cow is found to have some disease at the slaughter house, it can be narrowed down to one ranch or feed lot.

Now, because of the close confines of the feedlot, it can easily be presumed that the sick cow came into close proximity with all the other cattle there. And so the new technology is just simply not needed, it's a wasteful expense.

For the rancher, equiping each of his hands with a scanner gets expensive. The data is instantly intrusive, as in "why didn't you pasture your cows this way" and in some instances could easily be used by overzealous groups (ie peta) to grief ranchers about their animal husbandry practices.

All in all, it's a lot of expense, a lot of trouble, and a lot of intrusion, for very little is actual gain. In the efforts at finding disease, relying on this system alone to reduce the number of animals tested could mean that positives slip by because they weren't tested as they didn't show up in the contact list for the sick cow.

Re:So work out the bugs and END MAD COW DISEASE

[camperdave]

There is no way an RFID costs $50. Fifty cents, maybe. Besides, cows are all ear tagged now anyways, so it's really a matter of shifting the cost from an ear tag to an RFID. In other words, apart from the reader there would be no net change of cost. The only people whose way of life this might ruin would be the Mennonite/Amish.

Re:Let it collapse

[interkin3tic]

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.

Re:Let it collapse

[tcopeland]

> This regulation would hurt the small sustainable ranchers who are
> teetering on the edge of being able to compete, while benefiting
> the large-scale industry that you abhor.

So true! There's an unholy alliance between big business and big government; there's a list of examples in Timothy Carney's latest column. For more of the same, he's also the author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money.

Actual costs?

[girlintraining]

They're hemming and hawing about the costs? It's about $6 per tag today. Economy of scale could drive that a lot lower. And the tags can be removed and recycled into a new animal (betcha didn't know that!) -- after being properly sterilized, of course. They last about a 100+ years. The reader itself, as a handheld model runs anywhere from $150 to $1000 depending on range and other options. It's not necessary for it to connect to the internet or anything like that -- and the amount of data we're talking about could be handled via a 9600 baud modem! It's just a serial number for crissakes. Yes, farmers have teh intarwebs too. -_-

Each beef cow is worth about $800. Assuming 10% of the chips need to be replaced per... that's 60 cents. For something worth $800. The overhead here really is negligible, especially for a CAFO. That's an industrial feed lot, for those of you who don't know -- they're fed corn and kept in stalls, not grass-fed and left in fields. And did I mention it's all tax-deductible? Most everything on a farm is. Well, except you, that is. hehe.

So, in short... It's bull. Literally and figuratively. //Disclaimers: I have five dots in Lore:Rural. I am also a computer geek.

Re:Actual costs?

[Anonymous Coward]

1. The cost of the tag may be $6 at this time (for cattle only). A horse is $20. A goat (tail web) is $20. It is illegal in the state of Illinois to inject my own critters, therefore I must pay a vet to come out and do it - $60 per hour + sedation for the donkey (lumbar insertion required). We sat down with our vet and figured out the cost. 12 chickens, 37 goats, 2 steer and 1 donkey (guard). Our cost (including scanner, second computer ($900 - seizable under statute if we are missing a chicken - don't want the rest of our personal data taken), etc. )was $4,024 dollars to implement. Our entire feed/vet bill last year was $3,012.

The governments own study done by KSU states that 100 cows = $17 dollars per head. 50 cows = $60 per head. 10 cows = $81 per head. Now seeing that according to the NASS 80% of the cattle produced in this country come from 1 - 49 head - who will be affected? Small producers. (see #4 below).

2. The 840 tags are not removable and re-usable. Under Federal Statute they may only be removed at the time of slaughter by the slaughter house or by the "stakeholder" to whom the livestock belongs if slaughtered on "premises". It is a class 4 Felony to remove the tags.

3. This is not about the "cows" rights - this is about my rights as a livestock owner to continue our very small operation which provides 90% of our meat and dairy products. This in effect would cause us to lose $12K worth of milk per year. We don't feed anyone else but ourselves.

4. If this is such an "imperative program" why are the "large producers" exempt. Ever seen 1 million chickens - they are exempt. Large producers will use a "group lot number" - no individual tagging or reporting. What exactly is the definition of a "large producer" - seems the USDA forgot to set a number.

5. This program stops at slaughter. Once the head is removed, the carcass becomes just more "meat" in the pile. Now how is one going to determine - since testing takes place on the MEAT - if it is AIN 840-xxx-xxx-xxx-xx1 or AIN-840-xxx-xxx-xxx-xx2 that caused the issue? One needs to work these things out before implemting the program.

6. If my livestock never leaves my farm, then I have the "honor" of just registering my Real Property as a "Premises" (look in Blacks Law Dictionary for the problem there). But if I need to take my critter to the vet - can't, slaughterhouse - can't, bring on new breeding stock - can't. HOWEVER according to Illinois Statute I will be committing a Class 4 Felony if I do not take the critter to the vet.....catch 22.

The issue is this: This program has not been well thought out. Looks good on paper for exporters, but not for the little guy. Whenever you can get over 30,0000 Americans to go to a Federal Website and register their complaints/concerns it is pretty amazing.

The USDA should increase the safety of the food supply by:

1. Actually inspecting critters at the borders (less than 0.05% are actually looked at now).
2. Actually inspect the livestock being presented for slaughter.
3. Use the Disease programs in place now (Illinois has been disease free for many of these diseases for decades).
4. Not depend on the magic Rfid tag to create a +3 "Shield of Disease Resistance" on MY livestock.

Re:Actual costs?

[MikeV]

It seems that the typical geek's attention span stops at the tech and fails to move on. RFID is irrelevant. It's not the tech that's the issue here. Tag away and be happy. It's the policies that are the issue. And BTW - this article is about cattle - but ALL LIVESTOCK are affected by this. Chickens, goats, sheep, rabbits. Heck, they may even try fish too before long. Maybe my honeybees. Policies are already in place that facilitate accurate and fast tracking of livestock. And ranchers and farmers are already paying a hefty fee for all this. NAIS is not something new, but rather a tightening of the noose - but a selective tightening in that mega-producers will get waivers while the jott and tittle letter of the rules will be stuck to the smaller producers with no waiver at all. Mega-producers will have records for herds rather than individual cattle and not have to chip them all. But wait - they already have that so nothing really changes for them. We, on the other hand, will have to chip everything and not just provide records for everything - which is good practice - but do so in a way that makes the Vogons look like hippy free-love liberals. It is above and beyond what is common sense or needed and is not addressing a problem but applying a wrench to our groin for the sake of it.

This is just more stuff

[cdrguru]

I talked recently to a small farmer with a few cows. They are already required to document entry and exit of cattle into and out of each county. Since their farm has multiple fields which are in two separate counties, they are required to submit this documentation each time they move an animal between the two fields. Which is of course stupid, but the regulations were designed without any consideration for a split-county operation like this.

This person has maybe 20 head, total. With the existing regulations it is almost too much to bother with. Adding more tracking, with more hardware requirements and obviously training for all hands involved it is going to be impractical for them to continue.

Yes, there were some feed problems for cows. Most of these problems have been identified and dealt with. I suspect there are still a few, but nothing that is going to create anything like the mad cow panic. Piling more and more regulation, especially regulation that is not focused on real problems buy imaginary ones, will simply mean that all cattle are raised by factory farms.

Why bother

[NotSoHeavyD3]

I mean since everyone seems to not know this mad cow disease is actually extremely rare. So rare that there are no known cases being caused by US, New Zealand, Canadian, or Australian beef the last time I checked.(Mostly because it's so cheap to feed cows here in the US corn and grass, beef producers generally don't bother feeding them that ground up animal garbage or if they do only at the very end. Outlaw that practice and you wouldn't have to worry.)

Pfft

[Anonymous Coward]

(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.

Re:Pfft

[twostix]

(Speaking as someone who comes from a long line of Australian farmers, has two dozen blood relatives on farms and knows pepole in every aspect of food production...you don't know much).

My uncle who had 500 head of free roaming grass fed Herefords on 2000 acres (Beef, Grain and Sheep) out in the Riverina sold all of his cattle rather than take on the extra burden of paperwork, large amount of labour and cost associated with complying with the NLIS.

He sold them to a feedlot that's part owned by the Mitsubishi Corporation.

He was not alone in his district.

So
A) You're wrong they didn't *get over it* it's hurting people who aren't in a position to just sell a huge part of their operation at a loss.
B) Feedlots loved the regulation as it's far easier to tag 500 head crammed into a few large sheds than 500 head wandering around 2000 acres. They know that and enjoy the benefit of not being burdened by that.
C) Given that you work in one of the largest meatoworks in Australia WTF would you know about small farmers?

Enjoy your disease ridden, growth hormone, antibiotic flooded feedlot "meat product".

Australia does is better.

[xmiker]

If Australian cattle farmers, including the operators of the 6,000,000 acre Anna Creek Station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station) in South Australia can implement tagging of all of their cattle, why can't you Americans just do it as well, instead of whining? I take it the US won't be complaining when Japan, Korea and the European Union don't want to buy their untraceable beef. (http://www.mla.com.au/TopicHierarchy/IndustryPrograms/NationalLivestockIdentificationSystem/default.htm)

Cattle Liberties

[MrKaos]

If the bovine has done nothing wrong, surely it has nothing to fear from being tracked. After what's the worst that can happen to it?

Re:Let it collapse

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

I say let it go down. Regulate them into the dust.
(Full disclosure, I abhor the meat industry.)

While the meat industry, and food industry in general, is guilty of a swathe of scandals, it's important to remember that without that industry, few of us would eat as well as we do.

If we want to have cheap, (reasonably) nutritious food, then some policies of the food industry are going to have to be tolerated to a certain degree. This doesn't mean we should accept all of the repulsive practices that the industry has come up with. But it does mean that our meat is not always going to come to our table via paths we'd like it to take.

Re:Dear Slashdot Editors,

[e9th]

I would have gone with "Ranchers Have Beef With Cow Chips"

Re:Let it collapse

[zippyspringboard]

My understanding is that the current plan is to allow large corporate operations, that move large numbers of animals around at a time, to identify them as a "unit" While smaller farmers who don't source from a single location, nor sell to a single location will be required to chip each animal. This is one advantage this gives the corporate process. Add in the registration process and all the various laws and fees that are sure to accompany the process, and its probably going to place a pretty hefty and disproportionate burden on the small farmer who has only a few critters. (or at least that is their fear) For example a $500 fee to register a property probably wouldn't phase a large corporate operation, but the guy who sells me my eggs and has only a dozen chickens probably isn't going to pony up the $500. Personally I think a good look at many of the large corporations that handle our food, and the type of hardball they can and do play, make Micro$oft look pretty warm and fuzzy.

Take a look at Australia!

[robbak]

I got a good laugh at "They don't understand the vastness of" the postage stamps you guys call "cattle ranches" over there.
Australia introduced NLIS a few years ago now, and it is going well. And we have cattle stations larger than Texas.

Re:Take a look at Australia!

[Jeeeb]

No we don't ;). I don't think you get how big Texas is. Anna Creek Station (Largest in Australia): 24,000km2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Creek_station) Texas: 696,241 km2 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas) That said Anna Creek Station is still bigger than a number of nations. E.g. Wales, Israel, .etc.

Re:Let it collapse

[yndrd1984]

Plus, if you don't like it you can choose not to support the slave industry...

Well, as long as nobody is forced to support it, there isn't a slave industry.

Re:Let it collapse

[stryyker]

It's hard to think of any industry that likes any increase in costs. They all fight it. Why don't they look to Australia? We already do similar. We have the largest cattle station in the world. It managed to adjust. Plenty of small operations too. They managed. It would be easier for all operators to swallow if some kind of levy is used across the industry. Then your only issue then is imports.

Re:Let it collapse

[crmarvin42]

Since the USDA is also subsidizing corn, soy, wheat, oats, etc. I don't think it matters that you don't eat one class of food subsidized by the USDA. Vegetarians might not like that the animal meat industry is getting handouts from the USDA, but I'm not all that excited about the USDA making Soy cheaper for Tofu manufacturers so it all comes out in the wash.

Re:Let it collapse

[parasonic]

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.

Re:Let it collapse

[allenw]

I'm curious to know how you define a 'corporate farm'. I really hope you don't think that every Xxxx Farms, Inc. is magically part of ADM.

Re:CAN WE HAVE MORE FP STORIES

[Philip K Dickhead]

Sound like he should have submitted the paper on "Subject/Object Ambiguation."

Day 12, still compulsively masturbating to the mental image of a tenured academic figuratively raping the Regents and Trustees. It appears that momentary respite from this condition is possible through the conscious recollection of the aroma of sauerkraut, as served in the cantine."

Cattle Tracking

[TW Burger]

This has been done in Canada for years. Although it was started with a bar code ear tag with a registration number rather than RFID it allowed a cow to be tracked from birth to market shelf. With RFID in place since 2005 the process is even easier and probably faster. http://www.cbef.com/cattle_identification_system.htm

Re:Let it collapse

[Curunir_wolf]

Plus, if you don't like it you can choose not to support the slave industry...

Well, as long as nobody is forced to support it, there isn't a slave industry.

And if the cows weren't forced to support it, there wouldn't be a meat industry either.

I tried to free my cow. She just stood there going "mooo". So I ate her.

Finally a solid reason why we need IPv6

[porky_pig_jr]

cause every cow needs its own IP address. And cows don't like NAT. No bull.

Re:Let it collapse

[OpenGLFan]

I grew up on a small cattle farm, so I know what I'm talking about. You absolutely have to sterilize young bulls, or they'll challenge the older bulls, and you'll wind up with a bloody bullpen instead of a lot of happy, complaining cows. So that's 50% of each year's herd you have to spend at least 15 seconds of...intensely personal time with anyway.

Secondly, cows aren't cats, but if one person is herding a small group of cattle then he's doing it through a chute or with a small bucket of feed. Again, this is completely not a problem.

Small cattle ranches obey Sturgeon's Law exactly like any other small groups. They whiners are just complaining because they aren't going to be able to hide downer cows or sell the sick ones before anybody notices. (Which, by the way, is one reason we raised our own, until my brother and I went to college and there was no more farm help.)

If I were still on my parents' farm, I'd welcome this move 100%, even restricted to the 28.8Kbps modem my parents still use.

NAIS nightmare

[Syntroxis]

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.