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Tracking cattle

Current system is voluntary, not fully developed

Dec. 11, 2006
Mike Corn
Hays Daily News

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ZURICH -- Darrell Sutor, who at age 86 raises Hereford cattle on his Rooks County ranch, has a deep disdain for government paperwork. But he welcomes government intervention when it comes to health-related issues in the cattle business.

"I think being able to trace back is necessary," he said, referring to the tracking of cattle from birth to slaughter.

The federal Department of Agriculture has proposed a National Animal Identification System that would achieve such tracking and has hopes that the mechanism for an all voluntary system will be in place by 2009.

"When it comes to health, we've got to have the government involvement," Sutor said.

The usefulness of animal identification programs was illustrated by the discoveries in recent years of mad cow disease -- bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- in Canada and the United States, and also by concerns of terrorism that were sharpened in 2001 by the 9-11 attacks.

Thinking that the animal ID program would soon be mandatory, Salinan Greg Anderes joined through the local Farmers and Ranchers Livestock Commission Co.

The agriculture and FFA teacher at Salina Central High School has a small cow-calf herd in Saline County.

"We tend to be proactive," he said.

Using the sale barn's system, Anderes said it costs $3 a head to install the electronic identification tags in the ears of his cattle. Two tags are needed for each animal "in case one falls out," he said.

The advantage on sale day could be that Anderes will receive 2 cents more a pound. For the 800-pound cattle that he sells, that's $16 a head.

"There are no guarantees on that, but it's kind of been implied," he said. "If that doesn't happen, then what's the motivation for the program?"

Some see identification programs as a daunting task. The first phase in tracking is registering premises where livestock are kept.

Kansas is home to about 27,000 beef producers, two-thirds of them having fewer than 50 animals. Fewer than 200 producers have more than 500 animals.

Matt Teagarden of the Kansas Livestock Association said the number of producers actually may be significantly more than that -- perhaps 40,000.

"If you've got a barn and a couple pens, that's a 'premise,' " he said, explaining that livestock operations include not only big ranches, feedlots and dairy farms, but also youth 4-H projects.

Kansas has begun registering each operation.

The state has 6.65 million cattle on ranches, according to the Kansas Beef Council, and the state ranks first in the number of commercial cattle processed -- 7.3 million head.

Because of the state's dense cattle population, the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year gave Kansas State University and Kansas Animal Health an $800,000 grant to study tracking cattle on and off trucks.

Such a project is part of the National Animal Identification System.

Officials want to know not only where an animal is at any moment but also where it's been -- allowing tracking of an animal within 48 hours of a disease outbreak.

"We are a dominant beef state, and we can't ignore that," said Dale Blasi, a Kansas State University beef specialist. "It's just the way it is."

Steers with a radio frequency ear tag -- which stores a 15-digit identification number -- were scanned every time they entered or exited a truck. A global positioning system identified the livestock's location.

Cellular technology automatically transferred the data to a central database.

University officials found some successes and some problems with the truck-tracking project, Blasi said, much of it involving trucker education. Some truckers forgot to turn on the systems before cattle were loaded or unloaded.

The USDA granted another $440,000 this spring for the university and animal health department to test scanning equipment and study the economic effect on sale barns, Blasi said.

But although these studies and others continue across the United States, a sound tracking program has yet to be adopted, Teagarden said.

In fact, in Kansas, only 4,300 of the state's 50,000 livestock premises (9 percent) have registered as part of voluntary National Animal Identification System, Teagarden said. The USDA wants 25 percent of premises in each state registered by January.

Kansas has since improved to 11 percent, but Teagarden doesn't figure it will reach 25 percent that quickly.

"There have been some tracking systems approved, there have been some tags approved for manufacture," he said. "But until there's a use for them, I'm not sure people will buy them."

Sutor isn't surprised that cattle producers are slow to participate in the voluntary identification program.

"You're not going to get every farmer -- unless you have under the penalty of law, and that's not a good thing either," he said.

But Sutor sees such identification as important.

"There're so many diseases, and you never know what a screwball from overseas is going to dump on us," he said.

The two prominent Kansas cattle organizations, the Kansas Livestock Association and the Kansas Cattleman's Association, are working with their respective national organizations to tailor an identification program that would meet the approval of producers and also allow researchers the tools needed to trace cattle.

Matt Teagarden of the Kansas Livestock Association said he is seeking to be a go-between for the group's members and the Kansas Livestock Commission, which is headed by his father, George Teagarden.

"The big push is animal health and trace-back systems," Matt Teagarden said of the government's interest in animal identification.

For cattlemen, though, the draw is the markets that might be opened if an identification system were in place.

If the process puts money in the pockets of producers, he said, they'll be more inclined to participate.

Without those market forces, he said, "it's tougher to justify the costs for some producers."

Teagarden said the United States is well behind tracking efforts under way in Canada and Australia, two beef competitors in the global market.

The question now, he said, is if a voluntary system will generate enough participation to make the plan work.

There may be a point, Teagarden said, when the industry has to ask whether a voluntary system is worthwhile.

"It's pretty hard to tell a producer to put an electronic tag in when it may never be read again," he said.

Mike Schultz, who tends a 110-head cow-calf operation near Brewster and sits on the board of the Kansas Cattleman's Association, said that group is working with its national association, R-CALF, to develop a livestock identification program. Still, the Kansas organization doesn't fully support such a program.

"Personally, I'm not in favor of it," he said. "If everyone does it, the profit will be gone. I'm more concerned with country-of-origin labeling rather than identification. If we control the border, then we don't need identification."

Schultz said cattle producers already have their animals inspected. His herd, for instance, is looked over twice a year by veterinarians.

"I think we're raising good, qualify beef," he said.

• Reporter Amy Bickel of the Hutchinson News contributed to this report.