It’s not entirely over yet, but on March 11, USDA at least partially resolved a decade-old debate over a national animal identification program.
What was proposed in Dec. 2003, as NAIS – a USDA program that was launched in 2006 with the intention of making it universal and mandatory, became voluntary, and then was shelved for lack of participation – was resurrected in August 2011 by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack as “animal disease traceability.” Under the proposed rule, livestock producers would no longer have to register their premises; only animals that crossed state lines would need identification, and there would be additional exemptions.
There were additional changes when the final rule was released in March 2013, according to Chelsea Good, vice president of government and industry affairs for the Kansas City, Mo., based Livestock Marketing Association. From LMA’s perspective, one of the most important changes was exemption of beef cattle under 18 months of age from the final rule.
According to USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, “Additional traceability requirements for this group will be addressed in separate rulemaking in the future, allowing more time for APHIS to work closely with industry to ensure the requirements are effective and can be implemented.” Good noted younger dairy cattle still require ID to move interstate, as do all beef cattle that are being used for rodeos, shows, exhibitions or recreational events.
USDA also made the final rule flexible for the states and tribes that will be responsible for managing the program. For instance, said Good, the states decide how to keep and store data on livestock that move interstate. “Some states are utilizing it just by sending it to the federal government,” Good told Ozarks Farm & Neighbor. “Other states are utilizing a system keeping the data there on the state level, and some states have a system where some of the information is shared with the state, while the rest of the information is kept there at the tagging site or livestock market level.”
She said there is an ongoing conversation on harmonizing the program between states, a particularly important step in addressing some of the exceptions to this rule. Among those, states can agree to exchange movement documents instead of a certificate of veterinary inspection or a health certificate; Good said there are some states working together on an owner-shipper statement that could be used instead of health certificates.
There is also variability in how much of the cost of compliance will accrue to the producer. Good said some states are covering the cost of compensating veterinarians who apply tags and other forms of official ID, but those states are in the minority. “Right now the federal government does have a limited number of identification tags available; we don’t know how long those will last,” she added.
But that isn’t an issue for many producers in Arkansas, University of Arkansas animal scientist Dr. Tom Troxel told OFN. He explained, “We’re in better shape than a lot of states because we still have our brucellosis law in effect, where heifers that go back to the farm and are used for breeding stock are still required to be calfhood vaccinated for brucellosis.” Part of the program is use of the Bangs tag, also referred to as the bright tag, which serves as an official animal identification tag; this means all cows in Arkansas are compliant with the animal disease traceability program.
The final rule also exempts cattle that go directly to an approved livestock facility for slaughter; all they need is the back tag applied at the sale barn and, noted Troxel, “That’s where a lot of our commercial cows go.” USDA left the requirements for official ID flexible, and the tattoos typically used on purebred cattle will be sufficient provided they’re also carrying health papers. And, Troxel said, “If they have a commuter herd – for example, we have some herds along the Oklahoma-Arkansas line – they can get an exemption through an agreement to move their cattle from one farm to the next farm across the state line. So there are some ways that cattlemen can work within the system to make it as palatable as possible.”
The original program a decade ago brought a lot of rancher resistance, but stakeholders agree on the importance of the goal of being able to rapidly detect the origin of an animal with a foreign disease. But Good said it’s also important that animal disease traceability doesn’t slow the speed of commerce and is designed to work the way the livestock industry is structured. She said, “Our member markets are working with those producers that come to their market to let them know what these new requirements are. It is the markets that are at a major point of cattle movement, so it’s the markets that are applying official identification and are in many cases keeping and submitting those records. So it is definitely something that we’re are already involved with on a day-to-day basis.”
