Does this smell ?

[HAY MAKER]

Subject: How much $ has NCBA spent on Animal ID?


NCBA's latest "talking points" on animal i.d. appear to be an effort to bolster its internal support for the "consortium" managed animal i.d. database. One has to wonder how NCBA membership felt when they discovered that USDA was within just a few months and about $50,000 from completing the construction of the public NAIS database when NCBA has reportedly spent a couple of million in dues dollars hiring a nearly bankrupt consulting frim to develop its own private database.

Any NCBA member worth their salt will, during the February annual meeting, ask the hard questions about exactly how much money has been spent thus far to develop, and advocate for, its privately owned and run database. How much funding from the national beef checkoff has been interwoven into this effort? Will there be a full and honest accounting at the mid-winter meeting?

It hasn't gone unnoticed by producers that several of the brochures developed by NCBA touting the privately held animal i.d. program carry the beef checkoff logo.

Perhaps when Montana Stockgrowers hosts Secretary Johanns at their mid-winter meeting, they can ask USDA about how the checkoff "government speech" is permitted to market a privately held animal i.d. program?

 

[PPRM]

Haymaker,

When you post these, could you post the source?????

I was in Food Processing (French Fries, Frozen Vegetables) and involved in several product recalls. There is intense training on procedures for quarenteeing product once there's a suspected problem....The take home lesson is that by identifying product and keeping good records you help yourself minimize what is recalled and destroyed.

So, if there's a disease outbreak, there are already current quarenteen procedures. The quarenteen will start out very broad to make sure all potential problem animals are held. As information comes in, animals are removed from the suspect list. I point this out in that one of the benefits of a good ID program is that more animals will be removed from quarenteen more quickly with good information.

I was at a meeting today and found the Northwest pilot project to be very interesting. I did get a kick out of guys asking about when calves will need tagged. The Common answer was at a point before commerce. It seemed to be a palatable and comfortable answer. So at a point I raised my hand and asked "isn't the point of Animal ID to help in the case of a disease outbreak?" When answered yes, I said, "Well, I hear a lot of comments in this dicussion about in the case of retained hiefers, they technically won't need to be tagged until they are sold as cull cows. a lot of guys seem to like this flexibilty, but doesn't that circumvent the original intent of animal ID?" "Shouldn't they be tagged prior to the first potential Co-mingling? State Vet got a look on his face and realized what I said and said, "You are absolutely right."

This seems like aramble, but here's my point. While we need flexibility to make this work real-world, don't kid yourself into thinking you won't need to do it at the first opportunity. In my experience in food processing, the product that had no identity was generally destroyed,

Haymaker, how this applies to your post is if we want Animal ID to be workable, we need to get involved. I have no direct experience with NCBA's efforts, but we need to be involved. If NCBA is doing something wrong, I say be involved and change it. Sitting on the sidelines throwing darts helps noone, especially ourselves as Cattlemen,

Hope you get some good rainfall this year,


PPRM

 

[ocm]

Haymaker,

When you post these, could you post the source?????

I was in Food Processing (French Fries, Frozen Vegetables) and involved in several product recalls. There is intense training on procedures for quarenteeing product once there's a suspected problem....The take home lesson is that by identifying product and keeping good records you help yourself minimize what is recalled and destroyed.

So, if there's a disease outbreak, there are already current quarenteen procedures. The quarenteen will start out very broad to make sure all potential problem animals are held. As information comes in, animals are removed from the suspect list. I point this out in that one of the benefits of a good ID program is that more animals will be removed from quarenteen more quickly with good information.

I was at a meeting today and found the Northwest pilot project to be very interesting. I did get a kick out of guys asking about when calves will need tagged. The Common answer was at a point before commerce. It seemed to be a palatable and comfortable answer. So at a point I raised my hand and asked "isn't the point of Animal ID to help in the case of a disease outbreak?" When answered yes, I said, "Well, I hear a lot of comments in this dicussion about in the case of retained hiefers, they technically won't need to be tagged until they are sold as cull cows. a lot of guys seem to like this flexibilty, but doesn't that circumvent the original intent of animal ID?" "Shouldn't they be tagged prior to the first potential Co-mingling? State Vet got a look on his face and realized what I said and said, "You are absolutely right."

This seems like aramble, but here's my point. While we need flexibility to make this work real-world, don't kid yourself into thinking you won't need to do it at the first opportunity. In my experience in food processing, the product that had no identity was generally destroyed,

Haymaker, how this applies to your post is if we want Animal ID to be workable, we need to get involved. I have no direct experience with NCBA's efforts, but we need to be involved. If NCBA is doing something wrong, I say be involved and change it. Sitting on the sidelines throwing darts helps noone, especially ourselves as Cattlemen,

Hope you get some good rainfall this year,


PPRM

Let me suggest this. ID is imperfect and will remain so for quite some time. Tag retention problems top the list. So let's say that an ID program works to identify 95% of animals. The remaining 5% fall into the lost tag, misread tag, human error kind of situation.

Now lets look at our current system. How well does it work. South Dakota found some Canadian bulls in 3 hours. Many states brand programs are going computerized. They generally lack individual id, but don't have the retention problem. Let's say that the current programs are 90% effective.

Now the question is. How much will it cost to get that 5% gain an id program will give us.

Nobody knows.
Nobody has analyzed current programs.
What are the real percentages in the example above?
What would it cost?
Is there a better way?
What is lost by using the current brand systems instead of adding individual id in a real world scenario.


The biggest problem with the NCBA approach is that they have not asked these very important questions.

 

[HAY MAKER]

PPRM,the source was an email sent to me,I dont dwell on the messenger,the message is what is important to me,I have said many times I dont agree with every thing I post,some times post these to get differnt opinions.
That said I am still undecided about this new animal ID program,especially if ncba is operateing it................good luck

PS My retention rate is 100% if the iron is hot enough,havent had very many fall off :wink:

 

[PPRM]

Haymaker,

My Iron works well to, but someone could have a Rockin TP iron in Washington, Idaho, ect....In Texas,there could be one in each county. I will say th Northwest Pilot Program seems to be a workable model. Our State Vet seemed to feel it met the standard of being workable at the speed of commerce and that he could ID where exposed animals were withi several hours,


Again, Good Luck on the Rain,


PPRM

 

[ocm]

Haymaker,

My Iron works well to, but someone could have a Rockin TP iron in Washington, Idaho, ect....In Texas,there could be one in each county. I will say th Northwest Pilot Program seems to be a workable model. Our State Vet seemed to feel it met the standard of being workable at the speed of commerce and that he could ID where exposed animals were withi several hours,


Again, Good Luck on the Rain,


PPRM

Duplicate brands in different states can present a problem in some situations. For example if a stray is found in another state wearing a brand from that state. But this is not traceback and it would be rare. In traceback situations the owner would have documentation showing which state the animal came from (also likely on record with the state) so that they would be looking at brands from a particular state.

Also this falls into that 10% part where the current brand programs fail. But the contribution to this kind of event is miniscule. This goes back to the argument of "how much will you pay to get it perfect". Proponents of ID will point out these scenarios, but nobody has brought forward a study that shows how often it would happen under a brand based tracking system, and how much it would cost to plug this particular loophole.

If it costs $1.00 per head to plug this loophole but it only happens one in a million cattle transactions then its not worth it.

No cost/benefit study has ever been done. Wouldn't you like to see it before you even conditionally support NAIS?

Texas and states that don't have a brand program are their own problem. Why should the rest of us pay for a fix to THEIR problems. Let those STATES require ID tags as a substitute for brands. It doesn't require a federalized program.

 

[PORKER]

Thats the Statement of the century'
NCBA has reportedly spent a couple of million in dues dollars hiring a nearly bankrupt consulting frim to develop its own private database.

ROFLOL HA HA