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In 2004, faced with threats of mad cow disease and outbreaks of E. coli, the USDA launched the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) with the goal of ensuring food safety. The plan is to tag every single livestock animal and keep their information and location in a searchable database, thus quickly tracing the animal's trail during an outbreak. A noble plan if not for the scads of farmers and ranchers who are vehemently against it.
Those in the livestock industry claim that no issue has triggered as much controversy as the NAIS and implementing it could be a "costly mistake" given the strong opposition.
Yesterday in Jefferson City, MO, a "listening meeting" (one of several sponsored by the USDA) was held to discuss the program and it drew livestock farmers from Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kansas and Wisconsin. In the often-raucous event, hundreds of farmers and ranchers demanded that the feds scrap the ambitious plan while insisting that it would fail in food safety and impinge on private business. Protesters gathered outside the hotel, while inside, critics of the USDA's program were supported with loud cheers, standing ovations and shouts of approval.
"You guys don't know what the heck you're doing,"
--David Hannes, a farmer from Mountain Grove near the Arkansas border, to U.S. Department of Agriculture employees at Tuesday's meeting
Of the 55 people who spoke in nearly four hours, only one pork producer, Brent Sandidge, endorsed NAIS. Sandidge noted that pork sales plummeted during the recent swine flu outbreak, even though pigs weren't spreading the disease. He warned attendees that one infection not quickly contained could effectively ruin their industries. "I watched swine flu destroy our markets," Sandidge said before hecklers booed him off the microphone and he stormed out.
At this point, it's actually up to Individual states to decide whether to participate in the animal tracking program and whether to make farmers' participation voluntary or not. In some states, it's a done deal while in others, the issue is divisive.
"We need a good system in place to keep our U.S. livestock healthy,"
--USDA veterinarian David Hopson
Michigan became the first state in 2007 to make parts of the program mandatory by requiring radio frequency identification ear tags to be attached to cattle and dairy cows. The following year in Missouri, the state barred the state Department of Agriculture from participating in the program without the explicit approval of the Legislature. In fact, the Missouri Farmers Union has split from the National Farmers Union in its opposition to any kind of animal traceability system.
"The country was built on a free enterprise system and that should not be interrupted,"
--Steve Willard, president of the Missouri Cattlemen's Association
Much like California's egg initiative, Proposition 2, the main issue is money. At Tuesday's meeting, Missouri State Senator Wes Shoemyer, a farmer from Monroe County, spoke about the cost of a mandatory system citing a study by Kansas State University that suggested the average price of the system to a Missouri farmer would be $16 per head. An April cost-benefit analysis of NAIS estimated first-year implementation costs between $145 million and $228 million, to be paid by farmers already financially strapped. Still unknown, too, is how NAIS would be enforced and what the penalties for non-compliance might be.
"While mandatory animal identification is endlessly sold to lawmakers and consumers as a key element in new food safety regulations, producers have repeatedly pointed out that NAIS only tracks trouble after it occurs; it doesn’t prevent it. As such, it is not a food safety tool as much as a liability-assigning tool and no farmer wants a new expressway built between him and the federal courthouse."
--The Daily Republic (South Dakota) editorial
Still, one has to assume that if there is a deadly outbreak of some meat-sourced brain-eating disease, such concerns will seem weak and shortsighted. Either way, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has a fight on his hands.
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Darol Dickinson, an Ohio rancher, recently attended a USDA-sponsored meeting and patiently "listened until his whole load of hay was forked to the herd" and then blogged about it on Proud Political Junkies Gazette:
"We were told, NAIS would not be a choice. It was going to happen. NAIS would create increased livestock profit for those who promptly
