USDA will start requiring that certain cattle and bison have electronic eartags, if they are to be moved from one state to another.
“Rapid traceability in a disease outbreak will not only limit how long farms are quarantined, keep more animals from getting sick, and help ranchers and farmers get back to selling their products more quickly – but will help keep our markets open,” Michael Watson, administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, said in a news release Friday that accompanied the final rule.
Jenny Lester Moffitt, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs at USDA, said on this week’s Agri-Pulse Newsmakers, that the rule is "also about making sure that that we are able to act swiftly if there is a foreign animal disease, to be able to regionalize and to contain the work.”
APHIS tried to require Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags in 2020, but the mandate was pulled back following a court challenge. The final rule says eartags have to be “both visually and electronically readable in order to be recognized for use as official eartags for interstate movement of cattle and bison covered under the regulations ”
The rule “applies to all sexually intact cattle and bison 18 months of age or older, all dairy cattle, cattle and bison of any age used for rodeo or recreation events, and cattle or bison of any age used for shows or exhibitions,” APHIS said in its news release.
The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association supported the final rule.
“To avoid devastating financial losses during a potential outbreak and to help producers quickly return to commerce, we need an efficient animal disease traceability system,” NCBA said. Electronic ID tags “are easier to read and would yield a faster traceability response during a foreign animal disease outbreak” than the current, non-electronic version.
“The cattle industry faces immense threats from foreign animal diseases, which can be carried into the country by individual travelers, on contraband products, or through regular commerce,” the group said. “It is estimated that a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak in the U.S. would lead to $221 billion in economic losses.”
NCBA noted that “only 11% of the U.S. cattle herd is affected by this final rule,” which will not go into effect for six months.
R-CALF USA, another groups representing ranchers, had a different take. R-CALF CEO Bill Bullard called the rule "totally unnecessary" and "an infringement on the property rights and freedoms and liberties of independent cattle producers."
"It's an effort to gain further control over the cattle industry, and to benefit multinational meatpackers and multinational ear tag companies in the export market," Bullard claimed. "This rule is not needed for disease traceability. It is a regulatory overreach, and we will do everything possible to overturn this rule," including use of the Congressional Review Act.
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"We're talking to members of Congress now about a resolution of disapproval regarding this rule," Bullard said, adding tat the group would also be examining legal options.
In the rule, APHIS estimates that the annual cost of the EID program would be about $26.1 million.
“APHIS has historically provided funding for EID eartags and intends to continue doing so as long as funding is available,” the rule said.
APHIS noted in the final rule, which was released but not officially published, that “many of the commenters representing industry organizations and state departments of agriculture regulatory officials were supportive of the proposed rule and agreed that [electronic identification] furthered the goals of the [animal disease traceability] program.”
But there were also many ranchers and others opposed to the proposal. Some said not enough animals are covered.
“These commenters noted that USDA has stated that a participation rate of 70 percent of the nation’s cattle herd would be necessary for an ADT program to be effective,” APHIS noted in the final rule.
“Having a higher percentage of the nation’s cattle population officially identified would certainly be a benefit to a robust ADT program, but our focus in this rulemaking is to continue to enhance our ability to respond quickly to high-impact diseases of livestock within the constraints of the animal classes and movements that are currently required to have official identification and the animal classes and movements that are currently exempted,” APHIS said in the rule.
APHIS also cited a a 2018 World Perspectives study commissioned by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association that estimated for traceability to have “national significance,” 45%-90% identification would be required – a midpoint of 68%.
Responding to commenters who said an EID system was unnecessary because the current system is working well, APHIS cited data to show that when outfitted with an EID, “over half of states can trace animals to any one of four locations in less than 1 hour.”
Those locations are “the state where an animal was tagged, the location in-state where an animal was tagged, the state from which an animal was shipped out of, and the location in-state that an animal was shipped out-of-state from,” the rule said.
“However, lengthy times in the trace test exercises resulted when numbers from visual (metal) tags were transcribed inaccurately, movement records were not readily available, or information was only retrievable from labor-intensive paper filing systems,” the rule said.
In related news, Colombia became the first country to bar the importation of U.S. cattle because of the presence of avian flu, which has been found in more than 30 herds in eight states in the U.S., Reuters reported.
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