Agricultural News
One of the Big Five Beef Stories of 2010- Animal ID
Sun, 26 Dec 2010 20:21:41 CST
For the final week of 2010- we are going to look back over some of the major issues that have impacted the US beef cattle industry over the past twelve months. The issue we focus on today is Animal ID. It was decided as we ended 2009 and began 2010 by the US Department of Agriculture that the NAIS approach of keeping a national animal ID system in place was hopeless- and Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack and the USDA unveiled a different approach to trying to put into place an animal disease traceback program that would work effectively if needed because of a disease outbreak.
In February and March we had Beef Buzz reports and we pull from those reports to look back on an issue that is in no way close to being resolved. Click here for a USDA Q&A Factsheet on the subject, as issued back in February of this year.
We feature comments from Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack from when he defended the move away from NAIS to reporters at the Commodity Classic in March of 2010, and we also have a description of how a state run program may look, based on the comments to us by Oklahoma State Veternarian Dr. Becky Brewer.
This is an unresolved issue- especially for the cattle industry. How a state based program will work on a national basis is still unknown- and exactly who pays for what is also an unresolved part of the scheme. There was one good piece of animal ID news that came earlier in the month of December- the National Pork Board announced that some 92% of the known hog premises in the United States now have a Premise ID. Click here for more on that success story for disease traceback from the US Hog Industry.
The Beef Buzz is a regular feature heard on radio stations around the state on the Radio Oklahoma Network- but is also a regular audio feature found on this website as well. Click on the listen bar below for today's show- and check out our archives for older Beef Buzz shows covering the gamut of the beef cattle industry today.
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