The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service has issued its definitive traceability regulation, mandating the use of electronic ID tags for specific interstate movements of cattle and bison.
“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,” said Dr. Michael Watson, APHIS Administrator.
The USDA says that the most significant benefit of the rule for farmers and ranchers will be the enhanced ability of the United States to limit the impacts of animal disease outbreaks to certain regions, which is the key to maintaining our foreign markets.
“By being able to readily prove disease-free status in non-affected regions of the United States, we will be able to request foreign trading partners recognize disease-free regions or zones instead of cutting off trade for the entire country,” wrote APHIS in a press release. “Traceability of animals is necessary to establish these disease-free zones and facilitate the re-establishment of foreign and domestic market access with minimum delay in the wake of an animal disease event.”
The final rule requires official eartags to be visually and electronically readable for official use for interstate movement of certain cattle and bison, and revises and clarifies certain record requirements related to cattle.
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.
The USDA will continue to provide tags to producers free of charge to jumpstart efforts to enable the fastest possible response to a foreign animal disease. For information on how to obtain these free tags, visit the APHIS’ Animal Disease Traceability webpage.
A copy of this rule may be viewed online, and the rule will be published in the Federal Register in the coming weeks. This rule will be effective 180 days after publication in the Federal Register.
The response among cattlemen is conflicting
National Cattlemen’s Beef Association President Mark Eisele, a Wyoming rancher, issued the following statement in response to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s final traceability rule:
“USDA’s final traceability rule updates the existing requirement for animal identification that has been in place since 2013, switching from solely visual tags to tags that are both electronically and visually readable for certain classes of cattle moving interstate. Many producers are already familiar with using these visual tags and under the new rule, they will instead use electronic tags. NCBA has worked hard to secure $15 million in funding for producers to reduce the cost of implementing this change. We also remain committed to safeguarding producers’ private data and continuing to reduce the cost of ear tags for farmers and ranchers. Our industry faces a tremendous threat from the risk of a future foreign animal disease on American soil. 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.”
Meanwhile, R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard expressed his organization’s disappointment with the rule:
“It’s no surprise that while USDA claims this EID mandate is to improve disease control, it proudly discloses in the rule’s accompanying press release that ‘the most significant benefits of the rule’ is to maintain foreign markets. This is because the beneficiaries of this rule are not cattle producers or consumers. Instead, this rule is intended to benefit multinational beef packers and multinational eartag manufacturers who will profit at the expense of cattle producers and consumers. In fact, because the rule is cost-prohibitive for independent cattle producers, the agency is using millions of taxpayer dollars to give millions of their unnecessary EID ear tags away.”
