The U.S. cattle industry has done its best to protect itself and prepare for an animal disease outbreak. A new rule goes into effect on November 5th, requiring the use of visual and electronic tags to select cattle.
The controversial subject has divided the industry. However, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association argues that this rule is nothing new, but rather an update.
According to NCBA’s Ethan Lane, “The federal government, USDA APHIS, has begun this rulemaking and now finalized a rulemaking, updating their sort of original foray here back in 2013. That is when they established the animal disease traceability rule that we are currently operating under, which establishes a class of cattle which is intact breeding animals over eighteen months, moving interstate, as well as rodeo cattle, bison, dairy cattle, and show cattle that are required to be traceable as they move from state to state. That isn’t steers going to slaughter. That isn’t animals under eighteen months. That isn’t total herd. That is just this one specific group of cattle that’s subject to those animal disease traceability rule and has been since 2013. So, the data that we’re talking about here isn’t new. What new in this rule is updating the technology in the ear tag that producers will use if they’re in that class of cattle to comply with the rule.
Lane goes on to highlight what he says is misinformation among producers right now.
“What it is not, and I think this is something that’s important for producers to understand because there’s been a lot of misinformation out there. This is not a big, ominous database at USDA, where they’re going to be able to, you know, get in and ascertain the size of your herd or state to gauge emission footprints from your operation. This is simply an update to the technology and the existing animal disease traceability program that’s going to allow that information to be put on spreadsheets and put into that, you know, that state database quicker but it’s not any new information really in this process,” Lane explains.
A similar sentiment was shared by a Texas A&M beef cattle specialist, who calls traceability a positive thing.
“The idea and premise behind traceability is to try to minimize the amount of time that, in such an event where there’s a major animal health outbreak, disease outbreak, markets are disrupted the least amount as possible and the minimum amount of restrictions and cattle movement are possible... So, from what your cattle are worth standpoint and your ability to keep doing business as usual in the face of one of those situations— traceability is a positive thing,” Jason Smith states. “It’s something that makes a lot of us uncomfortable. We don’t like often the idea of other people knowing certain aspects about our business and our operation, and those are, you know, those are real things that we got to think about, but the thing I want to mention here is, and this goes back to what I mentioned are some of those misperceptions, there is no mandatory identification requirement that applies to all cattle.”
