Tommy
Well-known member
USDA backs off on centralized database and mandatory ID
Tam Moore
Capital Press Staff Writer
DENVER - There won't be a mandatory U.S. animal identification program by 2009, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has dropped a 6-month-old plan for contracting with a privatized central database to launch the cattle segment of ID.
That's the message Neil Hammerschmidt, the USDA's National Animal Identification System coordinator, brought last week to Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America.
"We won on ID," R-CALF President Chuck Kiker said after listening to Hammerschmidt's presentation Jan. 20. R-CALF and other ID critics questioned the USDA's intention to concentrate the data with a system the rival National Cattlemen's Beef Association organized, then spun off as a free-standing nonprofit organization.
The U.S. Animal Identification Organization, a consortium pushed by the NCBA, formed Jan. 10. Apparently, it won't handle all of the ID action that promises to unfold in coming years.
Instead of a single database, Hammerschmidt said, USDA, state and tribal animal health agencies will use multiple databases, relying on those who contract with the USDA to furnish livestock tracking information.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns had announced the single privatized concept in July 2005.
Hammerschmidt said it wasn't just protests from R-CALF that sank it. A variety of state animal health laws make it certain that several state veterinarians would have to keep databases regardless of the federal policy.
"Our preference is a centralized system. It is probably the most efficient ... probably the least costly," Hammerschmidt said. "However, it has been made clear to us that achieving one central database is not in the cards. We will interface with multiple databases, both in the private sector and with the states."
The mandatory program is still described this week on the USDA website at http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml . It calls for a January 2009 implementation of mandatory ID. Hammerschmidt dismissed that plan as "a draft" that will be revised.
He told R-CALF members that on the practical side it would take 2 to 2 1/2 years for USDA to write and get public comment on complex rules needed to implement a mandatory ID scheme.
"Today there is no one working on rules to implement a mandatory program," he said. "We want to see what we can accomplish (on a voluntary basis) through market incentives, and we want to see what the market desires."
Talk of a national animal ID program began a decade ago as veterinarians realized shortcomings in tracing diseased animals back to point of infection. It was speeded along as the brucellosis eradication program, which includes ID for female breeding animals, gained success. Were brucellosis to be eradicated, that ID program would go away.
When bovine spongiform encephalopathy was confirmed in the United States in December 2003, the USDA pushed for rapid implementation of the ID plan a consortium of animal health officials had been working on. Traceback took weeks in that first BSE case, and several cattle from the Canadian shipment that included the BSE cow couldn't be accounted for.
The current plan is based on a national standard that will allow vets to trace back any animal to its birthplace within 48 hours. Susan Keller, the state veterinarian for North Dakota and part of an R-CALF panel on ID, said for some highly contagious events, such as a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, 48 hours "is not quick enough."
Keller put down cattlemen's arguments that existing hot brands do the traceback job. It's not individual ID, she said, and a lot of states have no brand system. She said she worries about exotic disease that could catch U.S. livestock unawares.
"Foreign animal diseases are a given," Keller said. "It is a question of when they get here, not if they get here. It is easy to introduce these diseases."
Tam Moore
Capital Press Staff Writer
DENVER - There won't be a mandatory U.S. animal identification program by 2009, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has dropped a 6-month-old plan for contracting with a privatized central database to launch the cattle segment of ID.
That's the message Neil Hammerschmidt, the USDA's National Animal Identification System coordinator, brought last week to Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund United Stockgrowers of America.
"We won on ID," R-CALF President Chuck Kiker said after listening to Hammerschmidt's presentation Jan. 20. R-CALF and other ID critics questioned the USDA's intention to concentrate the data with a system the rival National Cattlemen's Beef Association organized, then spun off as a free-standing nonprofit organization.
The U.S. Animal Identification Organization, a consortium pushed by the NCBA, formed Jan. 10. Apparently, it won't handle all of the ID action that promises to unfold in coming years.
Instead of a single database, Hammerschmidt said, USDA, state and tribal animal health agencies will use multiple databases, relying on those who contract with the USDA to furnish livestock tracking information.
Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns had announced the single privatized concept in July 2005.
Hammerschmidt said it wasn't just protests from R-CALF that sank it. A variety of state animal health laws make it certain that several state veterinarians would have to keep databases regardless of the federal policy.
"Our preference is a centralized system. It is probably the most efficient ... probably the least costly," Hammerschmidt said. "However, it has been made clear to us that achieving one central database is not in the cards. We will interface with multiple databases, both in the private sector and with the states."
The mandatory program is still described this week on the USDA website at http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml . It calls for a January 2009 implementation of mandatory ID. Hammerschmidt dismissed that plan as "a draft" that will be revised.
He told R-CALF members that on the practical side it would take 2 to 2 1/2 years for USDA to write and get public comment on complex rules needed to implement a mandatory ID scheme.
"Today there is no one working on rules to implement a mandatory program," he said. "We want to see what we can accomplish (on a voluntary basis) through market incentives, and we want to see what the market desires."
Talk of a national animal ID program began a decade ago as veterinarians realized shortcomings in tracing diseased animals back to point of infection. It was speeded along as the brucellosis eradication program, which includes ID for female breeding animals, gained success. Were brucellosis to be eradicated, that ID program would go away.
When bovine spongiform encephalopathy was confirmed in the United States in December 2003, the USDA pushed for rapid implementation of the ID plan a consortium of animal health officials had been working on. Traceback took weeks in that first BSE case, and several cattle from the Canadian shipment that included the BSE cow couldn't be accounted for.
The current plan is based on a national standard that will allow vets to trace back any animal to its birthplace within 48 hours. Susan Keller, the state veterinarian for North Dakota and part of an R-CALF panel on ID, said for some highly contagious events, such as a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, 48 hours "is not quick enough."
Keller put down cattlemen's arguments that existing hot brands do the traceback job. It's not individual ID, she said, and a lot of states have no brand system. She said she worries about exotic disease that could catch U.S. livestock unawares.
"Foreign animal diseases are a given," Keller said. "It is a question of when they get here, not if they get here. It is easy to introduce these diseases."
