Western states slow to adopt federal livestock tracking plan

BOISE – The federal government has said it wants to be able to trace livestock movements from birth to slaughter by 2009, but some Western states are unsure if they can meet the deadline.

Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced the official timeline earlier this month. The goal is to pinpoint a single animal’s movements among the nation’s 9 billion cows, pigs and chickens within 48 hours after a disease is discovered.

The effort takes several steps: First, producers must get a state registry number for every location where they keep livestock. Next, the individual animals will be given numbers, and finally, the information will be combined in a database that national and state health officials can access in case they discover an animal with an illness like mad cow disease.

“In Washington state, we have an estimated 34,000 premises to be registered, with only about 1,000 done,” said Chris Spaulding, Washington’s animal identification specialist. “One of the key issues for our ranchers and farmers is confidentiality of the data, and our Legislature in 2006 just passed a confidentiality bill so that should help speed things up.”

In Oregon, however, the registration process seems to be slowing down. About 8 percent of producers have registered with the state, accounting for about 2,000 premises out of nearly 18,000 sites.

“We’re not getting many hits on the Web site, and people are coming to meetings but not really signing up for registration,” said Don Hansen, the Oregon state veterinarian. “In the last few months there’s been a real slowdown.”

Part of the issue is that in most states, participation is voluntary. But Hansen attributes most of the lagging interest to an anti-animal tracking campaign that has heated up in recent weeks, claiming the program will violate individual’s privacy rights.

“In my office in the past month there’s been a tremendous increase in anti-registration e-mails. It looks to me like a national effort, because they look like copies of the same piece,” Hansen said. “I don’t think it’s happening just in Oregon, it’s around the country.”

Jason Moniz, a member of the Hawaii Cattlemen’s Council and employee of the state veterinarian’s office, is more optimistic about his state reaching the 2009 deadline. In Hawaii, an estimated 18 percent of beef, dairy, swine, sheep and goat producers have already registered their premises with state officials.

In Nevada, however, only an estimated 5 percent of producers have registered their premises with the state, said Holly Pecetti, Nevada’s animal identification coordinator.

“I think the overall goal is a bit on the ambitious side. There are some things that are dependent on the USDA – for instance, you want them to maintain confidentiality. That’s a major issue and concern,” Pecetti said.

Some producers will be hesitant to sign up for the voluntary program unless they’re convinced that any information they provide to the national database won’t be made public, she said.

Idaho may be the Western state that is most prepared to reach the 2009 goal, with more than 15,000 of the state’s estimated 29,000 livestock already registered.

“No one can say for sure whether Idaho will meet the secretary’s guideline to have 100 percent of premises registered by January 2009, but right now we’re on track – in fact, we’re ahead of it,” said John Chatburn, the deputy administrator of the division of animal industries with the state Department of Agriculture.

Idaho’s success has been because of frequent and sustained outreach efforts, Chatburn said. “We’ve held a lot of workshops around the state, in conjunction with the University of Idaho, and we worked with the various industry trade associations,” he said. “We pass out registration materials and do a lot of outreach and go to all the large meetings, annual conferences, trade shows and large fairs.”

A previous animal industries administrator issued registration numbers to all the brand owners in the state, since they were already part of a public database, Chatburn said, and the office worked with groups such as the Dairymen’s Association to get all of their members registered as well.

Other countries with tracking systems, such as Australia, are using their national tracking system to gain an edge when marketing their beef, said Julie Morrison with the USDA’s Northwest Pilot Project. The project – a coalition of livestock producers in Idaho, California, Hawaii, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington – works with volunteers try to find the best tracking system.

Whether all the northwestern states will meet deadline is “a million-dollar question,” Morrison said from her Boise office.

“Our perspective is that it should be met even sooner than 2009 to stay competitive in the world beef market,” she said. “When we first started the pilot project, animal health concerns were driving it. But we’ve seen such an increase in the marketing aspects of using animal identification that there’s been a shift.”

When buyers can track beef from its source – and get a handle on whether the animal had antibiotics, ate only organic feed or was grain fed – they are willing to pay a premium for the product, Morrison said.

Nationally, about 10 percent of the nation’s 2 million premises have registered so far, the USDA’s chief veterinarian, John Clifford said. The USDA has not yet said if or when an animal tracking system will become mandatory, though Johanns has said it will likely be required eventually.