Cattle ID system cost too high?

Apr 20, 2009 10:36 AM, By David Bennett
Farm Press Editorial Staff

Controversy continues to swirl around the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), a USDA/APHIS-controlled registry for livestock and the land where they are kept.

The program, initiated in 2003, was developed as a way to quickly track and eradicate outbreaks of animal disease. By having rapid disease "traceability" in place, NAIS proponents -- which includes veterinary associations -- claim millions of animals and billions of dollars can be saved when and if disease arises.

While NAIS has been voluntary, sign-ups haven't been overwhelming. Politicians and government officials are now considering making the program mandatory. This has unleashed a torrent of criticism with privacy issues and the cost to small producers taking center stage.

During a mid-March hearing on NAIS, APHIS officials told the House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy, and Poultry that the poultry and sheep industries have the best participation in the program. Cattle signups, however, lag.

That admission surely wasn't a surprise for Max Thornsberry, who also testified at the hearing. Thornsberry -- president of the Ranchers-Cattleman Action Legal Fund (R-CALF) -- claimed NAIS is unnecessary as existing USDA programs already protect cattle. Congress shouldn't "allow USDA to supplant these successful programs with an unproven system that is likely to consume more resources in its administration than the agency now spends in prevention, control, and eradication of cattle diseases."

A day after the subcommittee hearing, Sen. Clair McCaskill of Missouri -- following up on promises made to rural constituents during her last campaign -- penned a letter to USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack. "Since 2002, USDA has been attempting to develop the NAIS program. (USDA) has spent over $130 million since 2004. Yet, according to GAO reports, the agency has been unable to produce a workable plan. ... As the number two calf-cow state in the nation, Missouri cannot afford for USDA to go forward with an unproven costly program.

Cost of implementation

"According to economic analysis conducted at Kansas State University, the cost of implementation for a family farm with 100 head of cattle would be approximately $16 per head, more than twice as much as that of a large producer with 400 head of cattle."

(To see McCaskill's full letter, go to McCaskill letter.)

McCaskill points out the average U.S. cattle operation has only 44 head per herd. Missouri's average herd size is even smaller.

McCaskill isn't the only Mid-South senator with concerns. In a recent interview with Delta Farm Press, Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas said keeping NAIS a "voluntary program is fine, allowing people to opt in if they want. But it will be disproportionately burdensome on smaller operations. For the life of me, I can't believe (USDA) wants to do that when everything out of their mouths is about encouraging small operations."

Making NAIS mandatory "will put liability, once again, back on the producer for issues that are ongoing -- largely driven by the media and resulting public outcry -- related to food safety," said Tim Gibbons, communications director for the Missouri Rural Crisis Center. "All the recent meat recalls and food safety scares were a result of what happened at the processing plants. Those problems didn't result from anything producers did."

Food safety is certainly worth pursuing, said Gibbons. However, to improve food safety and curb the public outcry, "more testing and inspections must be done at the processing plants. Food safety is very, very important. Instead of solving that, we're creating NAIS?

"NAIS would unfairly burden independent livestock producers. Under the plan, independent producers would be required to have one tag per animal. Meanwhile, concentrated animal feeding operations would only be required to have one tag per lot. Sometimes a lot contains thousands of animals."

Burden on producers

Why is that? NAIS proponents claim since animals in lots are kept in concentration until they are taken to processing plants, "there's no need for more than one tag since there's less chance for disease outbreaks. I don't know if that's true, or not. But I do know that putting such a burden on (small) producers will be bad for them, for our rural communities, for the livestock industry as a whole."

Another issue with NAIS: it would violate Missouri state law. Not long ago, a statute was passed that prohibits the Missouri Department of Agriculture from mandating premise registration without a vote of the legislature.

Also consider the time and money producers will have to spend to implement the system, said Gibbons. "Farmers will have to get tag readers. They'll have to use a computer. Even when they move animals from one pasture to another, they'll have to make note of it in the federal government's system. That is an unfair burden on producers with estimates of up to $2700 for the "shovel ready" system to tag the first animal.

There is also a question of fairness regarding NAIS and international trade. McCaskill's letter touched on the claim that "NAIS will open markets currently closed to U.S. meat exports resulting in larger profits for producers. Yet, Brazil, the largest exporter of beef in the world, does not currently have an animal identification system."

Gibbons complains the situation in Mexico is similar. "We're getting hundreds of thousands of steers from Mexico. Those steers aren't hooked into NAIS. We're bringing those in and mixing them with our meat animals that are going to be subject to NAIS? How does that make sense? Why would we make our producers implement this costly system when steers and meat are coming in from all over the world where there is no such system?"

Vilsack recently acknowledged the unrest NAIS has caused in the farming community. In testimony before Congress and in press conferences, Vilsack said the program won't move forward without approval from the congressional agriculture committees and the Obama administration.

e-mail: dbennett@farmpress.com

NAIS ~~ over estimated, over promised, over budget, unnecessary, unneeded and unwanted.

Brad Headtel

The NAIS is a years-old concept that has outlived its time and fails to recognize that economic instability is our greatest national hazard, not, if all the animals have a government number.

Mary--Fireworks Farm, CA.

NAIS is not a direct ban on meat or chicken or goat meat or ... but a slow, complex legal threat entailing loss of more and more control and then of isolated bankruptcy or of just giving up farming or ranching completely.

Linn Cohen-Cole, 2008

The illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.

Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State
(Source: New York Times, Oct. 28, 1973)

Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about.

Brad Headtel-------On Bruce (USDA) Knight's pandemic projections
of national livestock catastrophic die-offs.

Bureaucracy never sleeps.

Neil Young

Makes ranchers paw the dirt----like a bull looking forward to the virtues of castration.

on NAIS-------Brad Headtel

Only Jesus loves the stupid. As He looks closer toward the DC Beltway------it's an ever increasing stretch.

Brad Headtel

You are known by the low morals of the bureaucrats you tolerate.

Brad Headtel

Phony science begets phony public policy.

Walter Williams

NAIS~~~~ Mother of all unnecessary federal job creation schemes.

Brad Headtel

The issue is not the issue. Who decides the issue is the issue. If you decide the issue you are a free man. If a politician decides the issue you can un-elect him, but if a bureaucrat decides the issues you are his pawn and practically without recourse.

Harold Hockstatter

It is sad that here in the United States of America we must fight our government to protect our own rights, but fight I will.

 Jerry Fennell--From "Shattered Dreams"

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

On NAIS -- H.L. Mencken

Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it..

Adolf Hitler

There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.

Robert Heinlein

If a government program is not worth doing at all,   it is not worth doing well.

...on NAIS - Brad Headtel

Communism ~~ the government owns the means and method of production.  In fascism the government controls the means and method of production.

We're not happy until you're not happy...

USDA official on the Westland/Hallmark Meat recall of Feb. 17, 08

NAIS is one of those issues that everyone wishes never became an issue. It is a genie that will not go back in the bottle.

Troy Marshall, Seed Stock Digest, 1/7/08

The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

on the NAIS program..... - Frederick Douglass

We're out here branding cattle, worrying about our best horse going blind, when all of a sudden the USDA is working at mach speed filling our saddle bags with heavy NAIS rocks.

Michelle Reid

....NAIS matters less than flea sweat.
....producer interest in NAIS is less robust than a paper pig in a barbeque pit.

Wes Ishmael, Contributing editor,
BEEF Magazine, Dec. 2007

I work day and night to prevent NAIS!

This is the first time in my life I have had the opportunity to save billions of dollars of wasted government tax for my fellow livestock producers all over the nation. As it was said about Queen Esther of old, from the great palace of Shushan, '...who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this.?'

I feel the NAIS program, as planned, will embezzle from 10 to 60% of the profit from every livestock producer, and that is not an acceptable price to pay for a naive USDA concern about future unknown or previously eradicated diseases.
Every consumer or livestock owner should spend full time to prevent the enforcement of this cost to our nation.

Darol Dickinson

NAIS will not be mandatory under my tenure. I repeat will not!

Mike Johanns on mandatory National Animal Identification Surrender.
Sec. of Agriculture Mike Johanns quit the job two months later.

NAIS will put Livestock owners under closer surveillance than terrorists, illegals aliens, drug dealers, and convicted sex offenders/child molesters. Currently, only convicted sex offenders/child molesters have to register their premises.

BSE, bovine spongiform encephalopathy takes five to seven years to develop. It's not actually a disease that you have to rush to trace. You can take about all the time you need. What you want to do is prevent it in the first place.

Reno, Nev. --- 11/29/07 Jay Truitt          
NCBA VP for governmental affairs,
on the USDA proposed 48 hour
emergency disease trace back.

Most of the stuff people worry about ain't never gunna happen.

Will Rogers . . . . on NAIS

No man's life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.

Mark Twain

What this country needs are more unemployed bureaucrats.

Edward Langley

Each time we give up information about ourselves to the government, we give up some of our freedom. The more the government or any institution knows about us, the more power it has over us. When the government knows all of our private information, we stand naked before official power; stripped of our privacy, we lose our rights and privileges. The Bill of Rights then becomes just so many words.

Senator Sam Ervin, June 1974.

The USDA is a run away agency out of control, with total disregard for U.S. citizens, yet full regard for other countries and free trade at all costs.

Dr. Max Thornsberry, President R-CALF USA

NAIS . . . a program that somewhat resembles an expensive plan to use baseball bats to kill mosquitoes . . . when we haven't found the mosquito---and the plan was proposed by a bat manufacturer.

NAIS . . . when freedom is outlawed, only outlaws will be free.

The urge to save humanity is almost always a fake front for the urge to rule.

H.L. Menchen

Is the USDA run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it?

NAIS is like a fat man in a swim suit - you may not appreciate what you see, but what isn't revealed is even more fearful.

NAIS Employee -- Never argue with a person whose job depends on not being convinced.

Remember - A major animal disease outbreak to a State Veterinarian is like a multi-car wreck to an auto body shop.

NAIS is the very model of how an unresponsive Executive Branch agency can cooperate with a globalist industrial agriculture and a technocratic corporate elite to force an undesired program upon an unwilling populace.

Mary Zanoni

NAIS press releases from USDA could present caviar in such a light we want to run from it like a falling meteorite.

Many associations embrace the NAIS because their paid leadership does so, regardless of what their members truly want.

Marida Favia delCore Borromeo

On NAIS - If USDA comes up with a stupid idea -- If Congress votes to fund it -- If 296,000,000 taxpayers write the check -- I'm sorry, it's still a stupid idea.

NAIS is a disease masquerading as its own cure.

NAIS is the result of looking for trouble, not finding it anywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly, and applying costly incorrect remedies.

As the government is doing wrong to us, like with NAIS, you gotta know they are doing wrong to people all over the world, right?  Why do all these countries hate the USA?

Linn Cohen-Cole

Once government gets its hands on new power, it is never relinquished.

Henry  Lamb ~~~ Sovereignty International