Reprint courtesy of Livestock Weekly

Vol 58, No. 12      San Angelo, Texas   1-800-284-5268     March 23, 2006

Stockmen's Gathering Concludes Animal ID Scheme Is Unworkable

By Steve Kelton

             SAN ANGELO ­ At an impromptu meeting here last weekend,
stockmen representing a broad cross-section of species took a generally dim
view of the national animal identification program.

             As it now stands, they all seemed to agree, USDA's proposed
program could be compared to a finely crafted blueprint for a concrete
blimp. It may look great on paper,  but out in the real world, no
amount of hot air will ever get it off the ground.

             William Edmiston, Eldorado rancher and veterinarian, said he
understood "why everybody's mad enough to be here."

             Edmiston, who currently serves on the Texas Animal Health
Commission, pointed out that TAHC's controversial premise registration plan
and USDA's animal ID program are "two different but connected issues."

             He noted that premise ID for TAHC is both the first tier in
the three-tiered program and a funding mechanism.

"Texas agencies by and large are funded by fees except for TAHC," Edmiston
explained, and the legislature took steps to change that in the last session.

During the budget process, legislators asked how much TAHC generates in
fees and were told the commission had no authority to charge fees.

             "I can fix that," he quoted House Agriculture and Livestock
Committee Chairman Rick Hardcastle as saying.

The mandatory premise registration plan and its $10 per year fee was the
chosen mechanism. The vehicle was House Bill 1361.

Meanwhile, TAHC raised the cost for an animal health certificate form to $5
from the 25 cents they had charged for years. The increased certificate
price "will probably be enough to meet our fee obligations," Edmiston said.
Premise money will go into the general fund, "and much of it will come back
indirectly to fund TAHC."

             Premise ID is not tied specifically to the federal animal ID
program, he stressed, whatever that program eventually turns out to be.

Edmiston added that the federals' "draft" plan for animal identification
represented "what they would like." It is akin to "what they intended to do
with scrapie, before we showed them it wouldn't work."

             "For me," Edmiston said, "national ID has a lot of good
points, but where the rubber meets the road, it still has to work," and the
current plan won't do that as written.

"It's reasonable to make me responsible for what happens on my place, but I
don't buy into what USDA is trying to do."

             TAHC's premise ID fee is like insurance, he explained. "It
lets everyone who sells into commerce pay a little bit and spread it out.
The other option is to put all the cost on the person who has an outbreak."

             As for the idea that small-scale operations aren't an animal
disease threat and should be exempt, he pointed out that the last three
brucellosis cases in Texas involved herds of fewer than 30 head.

One of them, he added, was "an old guy who never sold a cull cow" but let
them die on the ranch so they wouldn't be tested and found to have bangs.
When the man died, his sons evidently didn't know the drill, sold some
culls "and finally got caught."

As long as there are still people out there doing that, Texas will never
find and clean up its last banger herd, he said.

             As a funding mechanism, TAHC's premise plan "is about us, not
what USDA wants us to do."

Nevertheless, it probably won't go forward as planned. "Rep. Hardcastle
heard how mad people were," he explained, which is one reason TAHC
cancelled a meeting scheduled this week to adopt the program.

             In the end, he predicted, TAHC "may not do it." He said Texas
Agriculture Commissioner Susan Combs is opposed to it, "and she will be the
next Comptroller."

             Meanwhile, the issue of funding "will come up again in the
next session" because the legislature wants TAHC to generate at least some
of its own funding. "If you don't like (this method), get in line and help
us fund it differently."

             Rancher, publisher and State Representative Scott Campbell
said he and other legislators "didn't hear a lot about (HB 1361) when it
was taking place. A lot of times, we don't know all the implications."

The legislature is in session only a few months out of every two years, "so
we do things quickly and sometimes in desperation; we don't always know the
consequences."

             However, Campbell said, "just because something was done
doesn't mean it can't be undone. When a bunch of citizens show up, they are
a lot more effective than a lobbyist, so figure out what you need and tell
us. Representative Hardcastle is a logical, practical ag man, and he will
listen; there are a lot of reasonable people who will listen."

Charley Christensen is general manager of Producers Livestock Auction here.
Speaking as a market operator, rancher and ID pilot project participant, he
said, "My opinion is that it should be a voluntary national ID program.

             "The first push I heard was several years ago at a TSCRA
meeting," Christensen explained. "We heard it was coming regardless,
because Homeland Security wanted it, then the goal became 48-hour
traceback. If a logical person looks at it, you know it won't stop a
terrorist because a terrorist doesn't care if he gets caught."

             Anyone who wants to spread an animal disease "could buy a
trailer-load of goats," infect them, then drive toward Florida "and pitch
one over the fence every time he sees a cow."

             "I don't mind registering my operation and paying $10 ­ it
costs almost that much for a cup of coffee," he said. "I'll even put in
eartags if they figure out how to make it work," but that hasn't happened yet.

             "The pilot projects were a huge waste of money," he opined,
"because we already knew the technology doesn't exist to gather information
'at the speed of commerce.' Commerce moves too fast for the technology
available today, and a lot of money was spent to promote something that
doesn't work."

             The projects just proved what was already known, that tag
readers can't sort individual tags out of a group and often aren't reliable
under the best of circumstances. Any number of cooperators have described
situations in which readers missed two out of three tags and animals had to
be run back through the chutes repeatedly.

             Besides, Christensen pointed out, "You can't funnel 400 goats
into a little chute so you can read their tags, because six other trucks
are waiting to unload."

             The timeline "is all fouled up," he insisted, and USDA needs
to start over from scratch. As for industry organizations that have
promoted the plan, "NCBA's members aren't in favor, and they need to storm
into the meetings and say so."

             The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers, he added, favors a
voluntary program.

John West, an R-CALF field man from Weatherford, said USDA's program has
"too many unresolved questions and too short a timeline."

             On the question of a public versus privately held database,
West said, "Who will access it? If USDA ever accesses it, it will become
public information, so we might as well let them run it and pay for it."

             Rancher Dick Winters of Brady noted that at the U.S. Animal
Health Association meeting last October, Dr. John Clifford of USDA said his
agency's preference was for a single federal entity, "but they knew they
couldn't force it through," so they opted for a multi-portal private program.

             "There was enough outrage there to force Clifford to back off
and revisit" the issue, Winters said.

             He cited an observation by TAHC Executive Director Dr. Bob
Hillman that it was obvious the livestock industry doesn't want a federal
database.

"There just isn't any faith in the federal government," Winters said.

             On one hand, Winters believes a federal database could be
exempted from FOIA. "They did it with livestock protection collars and the
M-44.

             "But we have to make Congress a hell of a lot more aware of
our position. The first thing is to determine if they can totally guarantee
confidentiality of the data, otherwise they'll have to bring guns to
enforce this."

Scott Graves is an aide to U.S. Rep. Mike Conaway, R-Texas, and was on hand
for the meeting to take participants' views back to Washington. Graves said
skepticism about the security of a government-run database is
understandable, because the government "accidentally released information
on the tobacco program the other day, and now they're pressuring Google for
private data.

"My boss wants producers to figure out what they want and then structure
the program accordingly," Graves said.

             "If it's for the good of the public, then by God, I want John
Q. Public to pay for it," Winters interjected.

             Graves said, given budgetary realities, "I don't see how
Congress would ever fund a mandatory program."

             Christensen added that just to institute such a program "would
cost billions of dollars, even if producers have to pay for the tags,
readers, etc."

             Graves said Conaway believes "producers should drive it, not
the government."

             At that point, Winters voiced what many in the room evidently
were thinking. He suggested that animal ID should be approached as a
market-driven voluntary program.

             "I have a premise ID and I had one of the first scrapie IDs,"
he said. "It's a marketing tool for me.

"I'm not a real good rancher like some of these guys," he quipped, "so I
have to be sly and cunning."

             Exotic wildlife make up a significant part of his operation,
and "exotic" doesn't mean "domesticated." Just because these animals are
non-native doesn't mean they are any less wild. Tagging them is not an option.

             "I'd kill 10 percent of my herd any time I gathered them.
Anyone who thinks this can be done has never been in a pen with a really
pissed off 400-pound axis deer."

             Christensen noted that promoters of a mandatory program claim
it's working in Canada, Australia and other countries, "but when you call
somebody up in one of those countries and check on it, they say it doesn't
work at all."

             Like Edmiston earlier, he compared it to the original scrapie
eradication plan, which was a top-down program driven by a bureaucratic
wish-list.

"It was really well written from the government's standpoint, but it had no
industry input. There was no possible way we could have adhered to those
rules at the time.

             "We finally got the author of those rules, Dianne Sutton, down
to San Angelo and showed her how it didn't work in commerce," he continued,
and she was able to get that message across to her superiors. What finally
emerged was an entirely different program.

             "I want to be involved in planning" the animal ID program,
Christensen said, "but that doesn't mean I support it."

Rancher and order buyer Vic Choate is one of many stockmen who have viewed
the scheme from the standpoint of boots on the ground and found it wanting.

             "I think we all agree that this needs to be voluntary," Choate
said.

"Just try to get out there and do this at night, in the rain at 30
degrees," he said of recording eartags while loading livestock. "Where are
you going to stand? If you stand in front of the chute, you're not going to
get a single head loaded."

             His father, Wade Choate, added, "You run a hundred head
through a chute and you're going to cripple one of them. Who's going to pay
for that?"

West Texas rancher and trader Ernest Woodward questioned the government's
determination to mandate compliance.

             "What is the importance of making it mandatory?" he asked.
"Shouldn't we be trying to start with a voluntary program and perfect the
system down the road?"

             Guy Sheppard, San Angelo large animal veterinarian and
president of the Texas Veterinary Medical Association, offered TVMA's
assessment.

"We don't have a real position," Sheppard said. "We tried to help TAHC get
funding. As veterinarians, we see how helpful it would be to be able to
find all this information, but we feel like the technology isn't there yet.
It might get a push if we made it mandatory, but there would be a lot of
uproar in between.

             "A lot of people are getting caught in the middle, including
TAHC; I think they're being as reasonable as they can be."

             Edmiston re-entered the fray at that point.

             "Playing the devil's advocate about a mandatory program, I
have to say that voluntary is no good for disease surveillance. We'd still
be fighting the first round on brucellosis if it hadn't been mandatory.

             "If we do it for traceback, it has to be mandatory," Edmiston
said. "But if it's mandatory, it has to be something we can live with ­ a
simple metal tag, etc.

             "The horse people are as mad as anybody" at the idea of a
mandatory program, he added, because the way things are today, "if they get
one sorrel horse tested for Coggins, then every sorrel horse they have can
go to the roping next week," and individual ID would prevent that.

Sonora rancher and veterinarian Joe David Ross said, "This isn't about
veterinarians wanting to make money. A good vet doesn't have the time to
put up with this stuff!

"But I'm telling you, fellows, we need some way to trace animals before we
have an outbreak of something like foot and mouth disease. Let's go
voluntary but keep progressing. There's a need out there, but we're not
ready for it."

Christensen offered an insightful take on the mandatory versus voluntary
debate.

             "If it's market-driven, the technology companies will come
around," he opined, and improve their products to compete. "But if it's
government-driven, the technology companies will say, 'This is what we have.'"

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