Eartags and Identification

My friend in New York has a great picture up of what <a href="http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/2006/02/this-is-what-happens-with-ear-tags.html">exactly happens</a> to the type of tags the <acronym title="United States Department of Agriculture, Bought and Paid for by The Big Meat Packers">USDA</acronym> wants us to use in this <acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym> scheme. I couldn't agree more, I see this all the time with my cattle.<br />n<br />nShe then continues in <a href="http://northviewdiary.blogspot.com/2006/02/local-animal-id.html">another post</a> about the Tags and how they stay in and how badly they are needed.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>And tagging doesn't carry a lot of weight anyhow. We have a pen with eleven yearlings in it. All were tagged with the same type of tagging system the government advocates. THREE still have their tags! THREE!</blockquote><br />n<br />nMine aren't even bunk fed and we have the same problem. Missing and lost tags.<br />n<br />n<blockquote>And then there is the fact that about twenty years ago an animal from here triggered a test at the state when we sent her to the auction. There was nothing wrong with her, they had just changed the test and it was so super sensitive that there were a lot of false positives. You know what? They were on our farm testing the whole herd the next day. No forty-eight hour trace back, more like eighteen! They don't need a new system to trace back cows. They just want more control over our personal property.</blockquote><br />n<br />n I couldn't agree more. Why is this necessary when there are perfectly adequate methods now for this. A couple of years ago I was getting a load of old cows ready to go to market. One of the things I do is brand inspect them to make sure they all belong to me before I ship them. I recognized them all so it was not a problem but I went the=rough the formalities anyway. Low and behold one of the cows did not have my brand on her. In fact, she had absolutely no brand on her at all. I knew the cow well, she had a real wild eye to her and had been giving me trouble for years so I knew she was mine but I had no brand to prove it.<br />n<br />nAfter consulting with the brand inspectors about what to do I shipped her to market as a stray so that they could try to identify who she belonged to. Within 12 hours they had positively identified the cow as mine and sold her in my name. How did they manage this? Through the existing brucellosis tag, and ear mark. Easy and no fuss or muss. No complicated ear tag needed. The existing laws and procedure in the state handled it no problem. So why is <acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym> needed? <br />n<br />nI still say it's a scheme by the meat packers to blame their problems on the small producers pure and simple. Maybe it's a test run for ID'ing all humans in the US too. Who knows or cares. <acronym title="National Animal Identification System">NAIS</acronym> needs opposed and now. We need to derail this before it goes any further. Mandatory Animal ID is wrong. If a producer wants to voluntarily do it thinking he is going to make more money that should be his choice, not something he is forced into by the government.<br />n<br />nRemember, an ID number never stopped a disease.<br />n<br />n<b>The view only changes for the lead dog. Norman O. Brown </b>