I am taking a class where we have to do a PR push either for or against the USDA's push for a National Animal Identification System.

In this system, that's going on line in a few states, and is slated to go national and be mandatory in 2008/2009- is intended to tag & track every single horse, cow, pig, chicken, lamb, turkey, and you get the idea (Farm animal) in the United States, and track their movements. Every time the animal is moved to a different place, taken to a meet or whatever, this movement must be logged into a database, and tracked.

From a safety of the food chain perspective, I can kind of understand this. Not only that, but if something like "Hoof & Mouth Disease" or "Avian Flu" came to the US, only a few animals would have to be slaughtered rather than thousands or hundreds of thousands, because we do not know where they have been.

I like it, but it sounds tedious. Not only that, it is expensive. The government plans to subsidize the expense, but the farm animal owner is looking at $20.00 per head for this registration... For the man with 40 head of cattle, that's only $800.00; but, for the one with 8,000 heads of cattle; that's $ 1.6 million, and I don't know if that's a 1-time fee, or an annual fee.
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Here's where the fun part starts... Soon there after, this tracking system is supposed to move to tracking all dogs, cats, their movement, and who knows where from there...

There are four of us in the group; initially I was for it, but once we dug up some research, we turned against it, due to the individual impact that the small farmers and soon to be, all animal owners will be impacted. We'd be for a modified plan, but not for the tracking of animals that are not a part of the food chain, or those from whom the chances of disease passing between the species- should not be subject to this...

I'm sure at least a few of you people will either be directly impacted by this, or know someone who will be. Depending on your belief, you may want to start pinging your state and federal representatives, and making folks aware...


http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml

 

I can see the benfits of tracking the farm animals but 20 per head is crazy...

the bottom line is though it will be tracking humans in the end, not just animals...

Count my vote against this crap

 

If it means the price of steaks and Thickburgers is going to go up because of this, then I'm against it....of course:o

 

tough call.

The cost is not a one time thing either. Every new animal needs one.

Makes it tough with the "animals meant to be food"

Dairy cattle, yeah. Fine. Meat cattle? how old are they when shipped off to the slaughter house? I know with swine they are around 6 months before being sent away.


So that could be a million per year in added expenses.

And then its a gov't run database so they will have animals listed that have been dead for years and then have BSE infected cattle not on the system.




Very tough call. We can be protected... but at a huge cost and with great ineptitude.

 

First thing to do is check your math. 8,000 x $20 is $160,000, not 1.6 million. If a rancher can afford to feed and take care of 8,000 cattle he can afford the $20 a head for the fee. He will get it bak in the end, especially if he doesn't have to destroy all his animals due to disease. $20 a head is nothing compared to what it costs to raise the cattle. It will all be passed on to the consumer anyway. I would gladly pay a couple of cents a pound to know that the meat I am buying is safe.

 

Why can't you use a system that uses a reusable tag. Then whenever an animal is slaughtered the tag is reissued to a new animal. Maybe have a method for changing the identifier code. Personally I think that using the same code would decrease the bloated Gov't database thing by forcing it to track the animal to it's end and reissuance of the identifier. I don't see why this couldn't be done for $5 a head. I mean, they're talking about doing something similar with groceries for goodness sakes to speed up inventory and checkout procedures.

 

You're right about the math...

But, if you think that $20 wil be easily dismissed by the owners, it's gonna end up hitting you in the wallet.

 

Like I said, I would pay a couple of cents a pound for the safety. As a steer can weigh in at as much as 1800lbs, that $20 gets spread out to 1-2 cents a pound. To me that is very justifiable.

 

Negative on making it mandatory just big government to lazy to do their job. On the other hand its actually big government admitting they can’t do their job correctly in insuring the food chain is safe.

With that being the case I say we disband the FDA, as far as food inspection and safety goes, and let private industry do the job as they can always do the job more through, more efficient, and much cheaper.

I would vote for the program to be voluntary and then label the meat in the stores indicating if that meat came from a controlled source, one with these stupid tags.

As far as cat’s and dog’s or any domestic animal it’s none of the federal governments business who has what, how many and where they are located.

It will NOT just be $20 a head and then passed on to the public. The $20 a head is cheap it will cost MUCH more then that with the bureaucratic government web of confusion trying to manage the program and that too will get passed on to the consumer.

Also it will cost much more then just the $20 per head for the farmer. There will be lots of government paper work to keep, records to keep etc. You can bet with all that paper work and other government regulations that will go along with it that $20 per head could go to $40, $60 or a few hundred dollars.

So if you think that tasty piece of meat is only going to cost you a few pennies’s more a pound you’re kidding yourself because big government will pack in their extra cost (code word TAX HIKE) and we all know how the government can never do their job correctly and ALWAYS need more money.

Hell I am afraid of buying more then a few stamps at a time because postage is always going up.

In my opinion this program has very little to do with public safety and a whole lot more about the federal government coming up with another scheme to raise money “for the children”. Nix the liberal tax hike hidden in the beef…

 

I agree... The government is a master of sleight of hand. They'll get you leaning towards their agenda on on hand; its what they aren't showing you, the by-product of your vote, that comes back to bite you in the *** later...

It's just another way for the government to get our permission to gather more data on us, without having to ask for it, or sneak and get it.

 

I will still disagree. It could be a lot more expensive to not have a system that can identify where a sick animal came from. Look at the ban by Japan on US beef. Cost to the US beef industry, $1.7 billion per year. The US market only uses so much beef, and they still have to feed the animal they have. Either that or just destroy them as a loss.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...-2005Mar9.html

It also takes a while to ID where the sick animal came from today. Weeks to months. With an ID system it could be hours or days.
Currently you can have an ID tag implanted in your pet, that will be regeistered as to the owner if the animal runs off. Takes all of 30 secs to do. No worse than giving the animal a shot.
As for more info on you, how? The animal is the one that is tagged, not you. The only people they would have info on is the farmers/ranchers that owned or sold the animal. With this in mind, if a farmer/rancher ends up have alot of sick animals, there probably is a reason and I think I would want to make sure he isn't selling that beef on the market.

 

The system could be developed and deployed but be voluntary. People will pay extra for better grades of meat; this would simply be another way to allow ranchers who pay for the system to market their product as superior.

The system would be more difficult because it would limit where untagged cattle can go (ie ranchers without the ability to support 100% tagged cattle) but it wouldn't force the ranchers who are barely making it to spend money they don't have.

The cattle that are raised and tagged from birth would also command extra money on the live market because they can be traced throughout their lives.

Extra features and safety are great. Spending money by the gov't or forcing businesses to do it is wrong. If the demand or need is great enough the free-market will drive the demand for the better meat/cattle and every rancher will eventually need to do it or they'll be gone.

Consumer choice and a free market should be able to make or break the program not a gov't subsidy.

 

Yes, but- it will be mandatory, not voluntary... At least, that's the plan for now...

 

well if its a mandatory plan or no plan than I choose no plan

 

I totaly agree.