Remember when the national meme was how the Republicans were the 'responsible' and 'competent' party? I don't think anyone will make that claim again anytime soon, at least with a straight face.
WSJ.com - U.S. Falls Behind In Tracking Cattle To Control Disease When the first U.S. case of mad-cow disease was discovered in December 2003, then-Secretary of Agriculture Ann M. Veneman pledged to hasten creation of a national identification system for tracing livestock quickly during a disease outbreak. She said she asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief information officer “to make it his top priority.”Today, more than two years later, the U.S. still has no national ID system for most farm animals, including chickens and beef cattle.
anytime the phrases market forces and voluntary system are used in this context, then the program is an acknowledged joke.
Although the agency expects nearly all newborn farm animals to be included in the system by 2009, it has abandoned the idea of mandatory participation, leaving critics to cast doubt on that projection.As recently as April 2005, the USDA's draft plan for a national ID system called for mandatory participation. But USDA officials insist the agency was never committed to that idea, and that in response to industry feedback they decided to go with a voluntary system. They express confidence that market forces, including pressure from big beef buyers and export markets, will help drive cattle owners to register their animals.
What exactly are these mysterious market forces, and why would the beef producers find them enticing? Sounds like a lot of empty verbiage to me.
A number of past participants in USDA animal-ID planning blame some of the delay in establishing a system on bitter feuding within the livestock industry. Trade associations have argued over who will control the data -- the government or private organizations -- as well as what information will be collected, who can access it and who will pay for the system.A main concern has been confidentiality. The industry wants to make sure that animal-rights activists can't use the federal Freedom of Information Act to learn the locations of livestock operations, which might make it easier for them to stage protests.
A vocal grassroots movement of small farmers and ranchers who oppose an animal-tracking system has been lobbying state and federal officials, rallying support through the Internet. One Web site, StopAnimalID.org, warns that under the USDA plan animal owners would be subject “to constant federal and state government surveillance,” a claim the agency denies.
Walter Jeffries, a pig farmer in West Topsham, Vt., runs another opposition site, NoNAIS.org, that he says draws between 7,000 and 13,000 visitors every weekday.
Registration of premises where animals are kept, a first step in a national tracking program, has already begun. But in a number of states, animal ID opponents have been trying to undermine the process. In February, dozens of protesters at a meeting of the Texas Animal Health Commission helped persuade it to postpone implementing regulations that would require such registration.
“This is supposed to be the land of the free, and pretty soon we'll be able to do nothing on our own property without permission from the government,” says Ken Kerner, a 47-year-old farmer and auto-body-shop owner from Cedar Creek, Texas, who owns a dozen cows.
...
Another producers' trade association, the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America, or R-Calf, which favors a government-run system, says it didn't trust the NCBA.The group fears that meat packers who belong to the NCBA might take advantage of the information in the private database -- for example, offering less if the data suggested cattle were in large supply. “It would give them tremendous buying power in the marketplace,” says Bill Bullard, R-Calf's chief executive.
The NCBA denies meat packers would have access to the database and dismisses R-Calf's concerns. “They don't like anything we like,” says Jay Truitt, the NCBA's vice president for government affairs in Washington.
Another issue is information oversight. Several past participants in the USDA's national animal ID planning program say they always assumed the government would administer the database. But in August, the USDA said it would support a tracking system in which animal-movement data was sent to “a single, privately held animal-tracking repository” that it could access -- the kind of plan the NCBA was advocating.
Allen Bright, the NCBA's animal ID coordinator, says his group believed the database the NCBA was developing would work well and draw industry support, and so “anticipated” that the USDA would choose it as the privately held repository.
Dale Moore, the USDA's chief of staff and a former NCBA chief lobbyist, says the policy change was based on input from more than just the NCBA. Producer groups and some state officials, he says, “felt a private-database approach would get us to our goals more quickly.”
'An Uproar'
But Mr. Moore concedes the privatization plan created “an uproar,” with many industry groups opposed to a single database and some groups demanding their own. By January, USDA officials were suggesting that the agency would abandon the idea. In April, it formally announced a “metadata system” that would allow the government to access animal movement tracking information from multiple, private, voluntary databases run by various industry groups.
The NCBA is still hoping to play a major role. In January, it helped to launch a nonprofit called the U.S. Animal Identification Organization to create a giant, multispecies private database with animal-tracking information. The NCBA, which has a representative on the nonprofit's board, now says it expects the database to be one of several eventually authorized by the USDA.
Last month, a House appropriations subcommittee voted to withhold nearly all additional funding for a national animal ID system until the USDA better defines the program and its costs. And yesterday, a Senate appropriations subcommittee voted unanimously to ask the Government Accountability Office to review the ID program's progress because “the direction of this system remains unclear.” Terri Teuber, the USDA's director of communications, says the agency is confident it can satisfy those queries.
Tags: Food
