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Capital Press - - - Friday
- - - Sept. 1, 2006 - - - 6:00 a.m. PDT
Animal
health workers sound off on ID (at NIAA ID/EXPO)
Feds hear concerns about slow progress, implementation
Tam Moore
Capital Press Staff Writer
A parade of federal
officials last week told an animal identification conference what's up with the
National Animal Identification System, and conference attendees told the
government it's playing catch-up.
The National Institute for Animal Health, a consortium of veterinary medicine
practitioners, state animal health officials and livestock industry trade
associations, held its three-day conference in Kansas City, with a kickoff
speech by Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns.
On the final day, the association polled attendees. More than 80 percent said
the USDA is behind on NAIS implementation. More than half said they want ID to
be mandatory.
Johanns repeated his position that ID needs to be a voluntary program, driven by
producers who see market benefits for using animal ID. This summer both the USDA
and the cattle-industry-sponsored U.S. Animal Identification Organization are
signing up and certifying vendors with existing databases and electronic ID tag
products.
Animal health officials sought an ID system that tracks animal movements long
before the need to do rapid traceback of animal contacts became an issue in
2003, when bovine spongiform encephalopathy was found in Canada and then the
United States. Their objective is to trace an animal to its birth herd within 48
hours so contagious diseases can be confirmed. Part of it is driven by nearing
eradication of brucellosis and its federal program requiring ID on all female
breeding cattle.
ID "is critical to complete disease eradication programs," John Clifford, the
USDA's chief veterinarian, said in a speech to the conference. In addition to
brucellosis, it is part of bovine tuberculosis, Johne's disease and BSE
programs. In sheep, ID is part of a scrapie eradication program.
Foot-and-mouth
Lurking elsewhere in the world is foot-and-mouth disease, a fast-spreading and
fatal ailment of several animal species. It has been kept out of the United
States in recent decades, but keeps cropping up overseas.
"What is the risk of an animal disease emergency? It's like predicting
hurricanes, earthquakes and other calamities. It isn't a question of if but
rather when," said Scott Stuart, chairman of the National Institute of Animal
Agriculture. He's the executive for National Livestock Producer's Association, a
trade group for cooperatives involved in animal agriculture.
John Weimers of the USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service presented
a slightly changed set of criteria for the voluntary system being assembled this
year, with a target of being fully operational in January 2009 for most meat
animals:
• Producer data must be kept confidential, protected from discovery under
federal or state open records laws.
• Only approved animal health authorities will have access to NAIS records.
• The records will be limited to information essential to animal disease
surveillance and monitoring.
NAIS is one year into registering premises, those places where livestock is
kept. Last week just over 293,000 locations were registered through state and
tribal agencies, just over 20 percent of places the USDA believes need
registration.
Cattle standards
Gary Wilson, an Ohio Department of Agriculture official who heads the NAIS work
group setting ID standards for cattle, said there's room for group ID on the
home ranch or farm, but individual ID is needed:
• When there's a change in ownership;
• When cattle are moved across state lines; or
• When owners commingle their animals with those owned by someone else
He said the emerging cattle ID standard will specifically exempt from individual
ID any animal sent to custom slaughter for personal use and animals taken to
livestock shows and fairs.
In a related note, the equine work group, seeking to defuse a rumor circulating
among some horse groups, made the point that no individual ID is recommended for
horses taken on recreational activities such as trail rides or hunting trips.
On the final day of the conference, Leo McDonnell, a Montana cattle breeder and
past president of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers
of America, said the ID effort needs to refocus on animal health. R-CALF wants a
voluntary system.
"Where I live in Montana, I can't go 20 (miles) west or 15 east without state
documentation of our animals - where they came from and where they're going - a
system that has served us well," McDonnell said.
Vermont drops mandatory premises registration
There's been a wave of
opposition to registration of places with animals in the past year, and on Aug.
14 Vermont became the second state to scrap a plan to make registration
mandatory.
The Vermont Department of Agriculture's registration proposal was met with
worries that farm data would be made public.
"USDA had promised us complete confidentiality. … Now we have reason to believe
that may not be the case," Steve Kerr, the Vermont secretary of agriculture,
said in withdrawing the controversial rule.
Tam Moore is based in
Medford, Ore.
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