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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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.