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USAgNet - February 08, 2010
The U.S. Agriculture Secretary is dropping plans to track animals from birth to butcher shop. After months of backlash from Western ranchers and others, Tom Vilsack said Friday that the U.S. Department
of Agriculture will kill its yearslong push for a national animal identification system. By noon, the USDA had pulled most references to the failed program from its Web site.
Vilsack said he will turn to state and tribal veterinarians for a uniform way to track animals shipped across the country. Tracking animals moving intrastate will be left up to each state government. The USDA
spent several years and more than $142 million developing the canceled program, which would have required everyone from large cattle ranchers to backyard chicken owners to tag livestock and report the
whereabouts of those animals to the government.
The identification program was moving forward despite protests until early 2009, when President Barack Obama appointed Vilsack agriculture secretary. The new secretary met with farm and ranch leaders
opposed to the move and then launched a countrywide listening tour to hear from individual farmers and ranchers who packed meetings.
Complaints about the USDA identification program were myriad. Some said regulations delivered so much cattle information to meatpackers that ranchers would have difficulty negotiating fair cattle prices.
Others objected to the plan’s mandatory government inspection requirements.
Proponents, such as the American Veterinary Medical Association, contended that extensive identification would protect consumers and minimize livestock loss. Bullard and others said the group recognized
the technology existed for a national identification program and ran with it.
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