Cattle rules assailed

OLYMPIA – A year ago, cattle ranchers asked Washington state lawmakers to keep secret any data submitted by ranchers or companies regarding livestock identification, as well as some animal testing information.

The bill sped through the Statehouse, winning unanimous passage in both the House and Senate.

But such now-secret information is apparently at the heart of new questions being raised about officials’ ability to enforce critical safeguards intended to prevent the importation of mad-cow-infected cattle from Canada.

Citing hundreds of pages of state records turned over to a ranching group shortly before the disclosure ban took effect, the Chicago Tribune on Monday reported that hundreds of Canadian cattle have entered the United States without government-required health papers or identification tags.

Canada on Wednesday confirmed its ninth case of mad-cow disease since 2003, in an Alberta bull that died on a farm two weeks ago. Mad-cow disease, or bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been linked to 150 human deaths, mostly in Britain, from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, a rare nerve disease.

A spokesman for Gov. Chris Gregoire said Monday that she has proposed spending an extra $1.2 million over the next two years to improve state Department of Agriculture enforcement of livestock health laws.

“The governor is aware of the concern,” spokesman Lars Erickson said.

He said Gregoire is also backing House Bill 1310, which would grant the director of the state Agriculture Department authority to halt livestock trucks and set up highway checkpoints for animal health documents. Among other changes, the bill would also require slaughter within three days of entering the state (instead of seven) and extend “hold orders” on animals based on suspected disease or document problems to two weeks instead of one.

The documents detailing the border problems were gathered by the Cattle Producers of Washington. Most of the paperwork, according to the Tribune, consists of letters between state officials and American cattle and meat companies. In the letters, the officials and companies try to track down records for Canadian cattle. The newspaper said that two meatpacking companies, cattle feed lot owners and brokers in both the United States and Canada are suing Washington for releasing the documents.

Several lawmakers said Monday that last year’s exemption from public disclosure – which became law in July – was intended to be narrow.

“The intent is certainly not to keep out information that affects the safety of the food supply,” said Rep. David Buri, R-Colfax.

“This looks totally beyond the scope of what the bill was intended to cover,” said Rep. Joel Kretz, R-Wauconda, who like Buri was a co-sponsor. The goal of agreeing to confidentiality, Kretz said, was simply to prevent big meatpacking companies from using records requests to figure out where livestock were concentrated and using that information to manipulate prices.

The bill prevents the public from seeing information submitted to a state or national livestock identification program. Animal health investigation information is only to be released after an investigation is complete.

The prime sponsor of the bill, Rep. Eric Pettigrew, D-Seattle, said he could barely remember the bill, which was one of a dozen he sponsored last year.

Rep. Steve Hailey, a Republican cattleman from Mesa who was elected in November, said the United States has sufficient safeguards in place to prevent mad-cow problems with U.S. cattle. The problem with importation records from Canadian cattle, he said, is the lack of teeth in federal rules designed to ensure that only safe cattle are imported from Canada.

“I think this is more of an issue of a national program that was put in place that looks a lot better on paper than it is in reality,” Hailey said.

Rep. Kirk Pearson, R-Monroe, also has a bill slated for a hearing Wednesday that would ban the state from establishing or participating in an animal identification program.

“There’s no scientific evidence that mass, uniform tagging and tracking of animals will improve this state’s or nation’s ability to prevent, control or respond to an outbreak of animal disease,” the bill states.

But Pearson said the measure is aimed principally at heading off an animal-identification plan for things like pygmy goats, ducks and geese. The bill exempts “disease-control programs” in specific species of livestock, as well as existing livestock identification and brand registration programs.