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Des Moines Register – Wednesday – April 1,
2009
(mentions R-CALF USA CEO Bill
Bullard)
Vilsack
open to animal ID but wants to allay fears
By PHILIP BRASHER
Washington,
D.C. —
The Barack Obama
administration wants to allay the concerns of producers who oppose creation of
an animal identification system before moving ahead with creating a mandatory
program.
Unless those objections are addressed, officials will get tied down chasing
producers who are evading the program, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack told
the House agricultural appropriations subcommittee today.
An animal identification system is intended to allow investigators to quickly
trace the sources of food-borne disease outbreaks.
Vilsack stopped short of
explicitly endorsing a mandatory ID program, though he said he is “supportive of
the effort to make sure that we have an identification system that will allow us
to prevent and/or mitigate problems.”
But many cattle producers and small-scale farmers are strongly opposed to a
mandatory system. They cite a number of concerns, including the cost, the
potential for lawsuits arising from disease outbreaks and the confidentiality of
records.
Some key lawmakers, including the chairwoman of the appropriations subcommittee,
Connecticut Democrat Rosa DeLauro, are pressing the administration to set up a
mandatory system anyway.
The Bush administration began work on an identification system after the
nation’s first case of mad cow disease in late 2003, but the program has since
languished.
Vilsack told DeLauro he would sit down soon with opponents of the program to
address their objections.
“If there are concerns about privacy and confidentiality, we need to address
those as we set a system up,” Vilsack said.
One cattle producers group, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United
Stockgrowers of America, says the identification system should be restricted to
breeding cattle. Bill Bullard, the group’s chief executive, said he outlined the
group’s concerns about the program in a private meeting with Vilsack in
February.
Also today, Vilsack defended his department’s plans to require farmers to allow
the Agriculture Department to check with the Internal Revenue Service on their
eligibility for subsidies.
Vilsack said the Agriculture Department would be checking on a “very, very
small” number of subsidy recipients to enforce income-eligibility rules.
“At some point in time, you have to make sure the payments are getting to the
people who are entitled to them and not to the people who aren’t,” he said.
Rep. Tom Latham, R-Iowa, said producers “are very, very concerned about
privacy.”
http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20090331/BUSINESS/90331038/1001/NEWS
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©2009 The Des Moines Register. All rights reserved.
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