SAN ANTONIO (DTN) -- USDA's final outline of its
animal disease traceability program could be rolled out as early as
this month, its project manager told animal health experts at a
conference on Wednesday.
"Our target has been
to publish in April so it is going through the clearance process. That
takes time. It's on its way. A specific date is hard to say but it
should be published here this spring," Neil Hammerschmidt said of the
National Animal Identification System's replacement program.
USDA
has been working on an animal identification system since the 1990s.
The concept briefly gained momentum from 2003 to 2005 as the U.S. found
three cases of bovine spongiform encephalopathy that effectively shut
down U.S. exports of beef. But livestock producers fought against a USDA
plan for a mandatory, national system. USDA determined it would be a
voluntary program, and then decentralized the effort to include state
veterinarians and a broader array of identification methods.
USDA
won't enforce the new program if Congress doesn't fund it,
Hammerschmidt told the audience at the National Institute for Animal
Agriculture conference. Primarily composed of the animal health industry
and state regulators, the institute and its members supported the
National Animal Identification System and have advocated that U.S.
agriculture needs to have better response systems in place in the case
of an outbreak of disease like the recent foot-and-mouth disease
outbreak in South Korea.
Most of the
components of the animal disease traceability program have already been
laid out and won't change: run by the states, cattle and four other
species will only need to be identified if they're moving across state
lines for commerce. It takes a technology-neutral stance instead of
NAIS's emphasis on electronic ID tags. The final rule's release will be
followed by a comment period, which could be extended beyond the typical
60-day window, before USDA begins implementing the program.
Hammerschmidt
said USDA intends to provide funding to the states along with
guidelines and a computer information system. With Congress sharpening
budget-cutting knives, the tracing program's fate remains uncertain.
"We'll just have to see how the budget information rolls out," he said.
The
budget burden would shift to the states, many of which face serious
budget shortfalls of their own. Robert Fourdraine, chairman of NIAA and
director of Wisconsin's animal disease tracing program and premise
identification, said federal dollars allotted for the traceability
program likely will be less than what USDA requests, if it gets any
funding at all.
USDA's program framework
reduces the upfront cost to producers by allowing a variety of tags,
including brucellosis vaccination tags that are generally free and
applied by veterinarians when cattle are vaccinated, instead of
requiring tags that have a computer chip inside, which usually cost
$2.50 each.
Allowing more forms of the
identification was a response to the feedback from ranchers and cow-calf
producers who feared the cost of the tags would slice into already thin
margins. Many were also deeply suspicious of the federal government's
oversight and were more supportive of a state-run system.
The down side of upfront savings is that it takes more labor to read and record the identification information manually.
"And
who's going to pay for those people if the federal government isn't
going to pay for those people? The state has to pay for it, and
generally they don't have a lot of dollars to do it, so who does it roll
back to? The industry," Fourdraine said. "And that's the question I've
heard other states ask. Where's the rest going to come from? We can talk
about all the plans we want but until we have a budget next to it
saying this is how much we have available to do this, that's going to
drive how much each state can do."
Each state
is responsible for creating a program to trace animals suspected of
being infected or potentially infected with a disease within its
borders. Animals will only need to be tagged if they're going to cross
state lines, and animals raised by people for their own consumption are
exempt. Under the new system, the identification burden shifts to
livestock markets and those who move cattle out of state. Animals that
move between states usually received a certificate of health from a
veterinarian, which the animal disease traceability program would
piggyback on.
Source: AP
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