USDA Three More Public Meetings on Animal Identification*******

[Katy]

Quote:
It would help if the us government would stop allowing companies to feed the cattle ground up bones and innards from other cows and chickens. Last I checked a healthy diet would help us have healthier animals... and in the long run it would cost less then tagging and tracking every animal from here to Cali.

I'm going to try really hard not to get into a discussion of animal feeds and what is or isn't in them. That always seems to turn out badly.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
It would help if the us government would stop allowing companies to feed the cattle ground up bones and innards from other cows and chickens. Last I checked a healthy diet would help us have healthier animals... and in the long run it would cost less then tagging and tracking every animal from here to Cali.

That has been disallowed for a long time.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
Most animals on farms and ranches in this country do enter the food chain sooner or later. Whether it's as a yearling steer or a packer cow, bull, or sow to be made into bologna when they can no longer be used as breeding stock. Even those kept as exibition stock and then breeders sooner or later end up in the food chain. The number of cattle and hogs allowed to die a slow lingering death from old age are few and far between.

If you're going to have a tracking system that works it's going to have to be from day one in that animals life clear thru when it's butchered.

There is no current documentation system.

 

[Sonoran Silkies]

Quote:
It would help if the us government would stop allowing companies to feed the cattle ground up bones and innards from other cows and chickens. Last I checked a healthy diet would help us have healthier animals... and in the long run it would cost less then tagging and tracking every animal from here to Cali.

I'm going to try really hard not to get into a discussion of animal feeds and what is or isn't in them. That always seems to turn out badly.

You're better than me. I have a hard time letting an incorrect statement lie. Oops, it already does

Excuse the pun--it was accidental, then I realized and decided it spoke volumes.

Seems to me that if they know who to pay for the sale of a cow at auction, then they already have the documentation they need for tracing the cow back to its herd of origin. Requiring the purchasers to keep records of cattle they send to slaughter is probably reasonable. It's the micromanagement that becomes a problem. Not to mention that large scale producers are able to skim past the regs, simply because they are large scale producers. And yet they are the place that is most likely to have a problem.

 

[Katy]

Quote:
I'm going to try really hard not to get into a discussion of animal feeds and what is or isn't in them. That always seems to turn out badly.

You're better than me. I have a hard time letting an incorrect statement lie. Oops, it already does

Excuse the pun--it was accidental, then I realized and decided it spoke volumes.

Seems to me that if they know who to pay for the sale of a cow at auction, then they already have the documentation they need for tracing the cow back to its herd of origin. Requiring the purchasers to keep records of cattle they send to slaughter is probably reasonable. It's the micromanagement that becomes a problem. Not to mention that large scale producers are able to skim past the regs, simply because they are large scale producers. And yet they are the place that is most likely to have a problem.

Yes, they know who to pay at the sale barn, but often those calves being sold did not originate with the seller...he may have bought them at another sale barn or private treaty from an individual before reselling them. Most yearlings sold at a sale barn are bought by a "buyer/broker" who in turn resells them to various people who have hired him to buy for them to stock their pasture for the season or to put in their feedlot. If they are being bought to stock a pasture, that means that more than likely they will make another trip thru another sale barn or at least be sold again to a feedlot. Most cattle in this country go thru more than one owner between birth and slaughter......knowing who to pay at the sale barn really does little to trace where they have come from.

 

[ducks4you]

wilds of pa,

, I could kiss you for posting this!!! I think that the ONLY reason that NAIS hasn't happened yet is because the country is in the midst of an economic Depression. In case anybody reading this doesn't know, the USDA and various private companies stand to make a bundle of money from NAIS by controlling Each and EVERY ANIMAL you own. They have been trying to do this for about one decade, more or less. They use fear arguments that this is the ONLY way to control epidemics in the food chain. They have been advertising work to go from farm to farm, like a census worker, and try to woo you to voluntarily microchip and account for every animal. Typical HUGE government. It is WWAAAYYY beyond a Coggins test. That, a voluntary test, at least is reasonable, especially since you're gonna know that your horse is sick before his blood test tells you he has "horse AIDS" and the government comes to destroy him.

Remember, in November...
You have an opportunity to vote OUT OF OFFICE every incumbant (of ANY of the 3 parties) Politician who wants to take away your rights to own your backyard animals because he or she supports NAIS. YOU play by the rules. You don't step on the rights of your neighbors. YOUR animals are not a nuisance. How DARE the USDA bully us.
If You AREN'T registered to Vote, GET REGISTERED TODAY!!! We need numbers, even if it looks like the people who look out for us in government are a shoe-in--don't COUNT on it. In the words of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, (in the Battle of Gettysburg, defending Little Round Top,)
"We must be STUBBORN today!"

 

[Danaus29]

My thought on this issue, if an animal is going to be entering the public food chain then there is a small need for traceback. But this issue was never set up to be used for quarantine or isolation of sick or potentially infected animals. There are no parameters for disease testing, no parameters for isolation, no parameters for paperwork proving immunizations or vet inspections, no parameters for vet inspections before sale, etc. This issue is simply about numbering and tracking each and every animal. There are no built in protections for the general public with respect to the health of animals before they are sent to a processing facility.

There is an open door for quarantine and destruction of an entire herd if one of your animals ends up at a processor with a sick animal. Even though the others weren't exposed they could possibly be destroyed because of the association. At least that's the way it was written in the previous NAIS bill.

 

[ducks4you]

IF we have any epidemics, it will be because they are introduced, NOT because of lazy animal owners. Did you miss the thread here about letting other bird owners come in contact with your flock? LOTS of chicken owners don't want anybody to carry any contaminants from other birds into their barnyards. I cannot believe that you, on a chicken-owners forum, think your rights will not be affected by the government dictating your mark every one of your live property. Look at how poorly run government agencies are. Do you know that they could make a mistake and come out and euthanize your whole, healthy flock? Will you be an apologist for them, then? Right now, they must prove that you animals carry illness.

This can and will become a Congressional bill. Read by Congressmen...MAYBE. Remember the Congressmen who now don't read bills that they sign? We cannot afford to be laisee fare regarding private property any longer. If you THINK you won't be affected, I suggest you do a little more study about this.

 

[speckledhen]

Ok, when these cows are all mixed/ground up together and the end product makes someone ill, how the heck are you going to know which exact cow was the problem? You can't. They don't process one cow at a time, folks. There are numerous animals in a huge container/vat/whatever of ground beef, not just one. So, there is absolutely no way to trace back from that point, IMO. If you think about this entire thing logically, it's completely a waste of taxpayer money. We already have a tracking system in place for beef that goes to market and do not need a new one.


That said, commercial operations are one thing, backyard flocks are entirely different and should never be "tracked".

 

[Katy]

Quote:
What kind of tracking system is there? As far as I'm aware there is none....once our calves are sold and co-mingled down the road with other groups of calves their identity is lost as far as coming from our farm.

I do agree that once they are ground for hamberger or bologna or whatever it would be impossible to know for certain which animal it came from.