Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

by Gilles Stockton | July 1, 2019

Most cattle producers have probably not paid enough attention to Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue’s recent announcement that adult cattle in interstate commerce will be required to carry RFID tags. This includes all cattle vaccinated for brucellosis. It is going to cost you and is a step towards requiring that all cattle (including feeder calves) be nationally registered from birth to death.

This administration promised less regulation, but maybe that only means relaxed scrutiny of big corporations. When it comes to the little guy, and this ID regulation is certainly aimed at the little guy, the standards seem different.

We are told that RFID tags are needed for enhanced surveillance and response to disease outbreaks, but the Secretary does not explain how or why. The little – and free – metal tags have successfully been used to eradicate brucellosis and tuberculosis in most of America. If RFID tags are needed anywhere, they are needed in the bison and elk of Yellowstone Park. That is the source of brucellosis today and that is where our government’s failure to address the problem continues to put cattle herds at risk.

As for Tuberculosis, we would have that eradicated too, except we keep importing it from Mexico. Obviously, what is needed are more stringent protocols for cattle imported from Mexico or maybe no Mexican cattle at all. Less obviously, but needed, is medical oversight of Mexican farm workers as it has been shown that Mexican farm workers infected with the bovine form of tuberculosis have transmitted it back to cattle here in the United States. I have nothing against Mexican citizens working on ranches, feedlots, and dairies. They need the work and the cattle industry needs the help. What we could all benefit from is less politics and bluster, and instead, an enhanced system for guest workers.

We are told that the RFID tags are really needed for surveillance and response against Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD), but this argument does not hold water either. If/when FMD is introduced into America, the immediate response will be to ban any movement of cloven-hoofed animals. This will be followed by intense surveillance of all livestock. Where FMD is discovered, there will be a required vaccination of all livestock in a ring around the infected herd. Whether the cattle have or don’t have RFID tags beforehand will be totally irrelevant. However, to be fair, if we are to eliminate FMD after it has been introduced, some form of identification will be needed from that point on.

I think that all of us are willing and anxious to do what is needed to protect our cattle herd from introduced diseases. What Secretary Purdue does not do is inspire confidence that USDA is holding up their end of the bargain. The budget for the Veterinary Service is being cut just when we are importing more beef from countries of South America with endemic FMD. To top it off, USDA is in the process of moving their most highly contagious disease research to Kansas, right into tornado alley where they have the strongest and largest twisters in the world.

A competent veterinary disease surveillance and response program needs a lot more than ear tags in cattle. And the ear tags are the least important part. To respond to an outbreak of FMD the first step will be to have rapid diagnosis. This is not as easy as it might seem. There are over twenty different strains of FMD, and a correct diagnosis is needed in order to respond with the proper vaccine. Keeping all of the possible vaccines ready and on hand is also an expensive and complicated endeavor.

By far the best scenario for FMD is to not import it in the first place. It is highly infectious and has an incubation period of up to fourteen days. That means that once introduced it will have spread all over the country before anyone knows there is a problem. It will also infect deer and feral pigs which will serve as a reservoir for the disease. Although FMD is not necessarily fatal to livestock and is also not harmful to people, it will stop our beef exports. As we all know, the market for cattle and beef is controlled by the beef packing cartel, who will use FMD as an excuse to collapse cattle prices. By allowing the imports of beef from countries with endemic FMD, our government has chosen to play Russian Roulette with the muzzle pointed directly at the head of America’s livestock producers.

The Secretary also promises that these RFID tags will enhance beef exports, alleging that international customers want to know where their beef comes from. But they already know where it comes from because that’s what the branded beef programs are for. With the government requiring electronic tagging this will simply give the source verification information away for free, allowing the packing cartel to undercut all of the branding programs.

In making this announcement requiring RFID tags, Secretary Perdue makes no attempt to assure us that USDA’s many relevant departments, are ready, properly staffed, and funded to prevent and respond to an FMD outbreak. Isn’t this a cart before the horse scenario? Show us how RFID tags fit into a surveillance and response system that truly protects our cattle, cattlemen would then be happy to participate.

Gilles Stockton
Stockton Ranch
Grass Range, Montana
406 428-2183
gillesstockton@gmail.com

Courtesy of Tom Giessel

by Food Sleuth Radio

Check it out: OCM’s Mike Callicrate joins Food Sleuth Radio this weekend, exposing consolidation and corruption in our meat markets.

“U.S. citizens don’t get the laws that benefit them; they get the laws that benefit global corporations that search the world for the cheapest of everything and then import that into the highest consuming market, which today is still the United States.” – Mike Callicrate

Listen here

by Gilles Stockton

Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Purdue probably expects that his press release announcing more access to Japan’s market for U.S. Beef will have cattle ranchers dancing a jig.  But frankly, there is not enough of a musical beat in this trade agreement to cause anyone to even tap their toes. All that Japan did was lift a ban on importing beef from cattle more than thirty months of age. 

What kind of meat comes from cattle more than thirty months of age – hamburger! We don’t export hamburger; we import hamburger.  We import so much hamburger that the cull cows I sold this spring brought just 52 cents a pound. For the past sixteen years Japan had been buying this type of meat from Australia or South America. 

Why would they start importing this beef from the United States and if we were to export what we have, we would in turn need to import the same thing from Australia or South America.  It makes little sense and I suspect that to come up with the promised annual $200 million more in beef exports, Secretary Purdue must have gathered his staff, passed around a jug of cheap wine and a bong until someone became inspired enough to shout out the magic number.

Thinking about the whole issue of the Japanese beef trade just makes me mad.  In 2003 a cow that had been recently imported from Canada was diagnosed with Classical Mad Cows Disease (BSE).  Our veterinary authorities did the responsible thing and shut off cattle and beef imports from Canada.  Other countries followed suit and suspended imports from both Canada and the US, as they were required to do by international veterinary protocols. 

Thankfully it turned out the U.S. did not in fact have a BSE infection problem. However, Canada did, and continued to discover BSE infected cattle, the last one in 2015. So, what did our government do after it became clear that there was no BSE in the American herd, they opened up imports of cattle from Canada. In 2005 our government apparently decided that we love our Canadian brothers and sisters so much that we volunteered to share in their international disease status. Japan of course extended their ban of US beef since meat from Canadian cattle was intermixed with our product. This move restored the ability of the beef packing cartel to manipulate the U.S. cattle market. Between the reduced exports and the packer market manipulation, US cattle prices went down. 

It wasn’t until 2013, years after the Bush Administration deliberately put the US beef supply in jeopardy, that Japan allowed the import of beef from cattle less than 30 months of age. By then it had become clear to everyone that younger cattle did not have the time to develop BSE. Secretary Purdue is now taking credit for opening up the Japanese market to meat from older cows. I am sorry but this is just a big “nothing” burger.

If Secretary Purdue wants to get cattle ranchers dancing in the streets, he should do something to fix the market that is giving us 52 cents for culls and $1.50 for feeder calves.  He can start by calling for Congress to restore Country of Origin Labeling for beef.  He could then follow up by signing off on the GIPSA Rules that give contract growers the right to sue chicken, pork, and beef integrators for fraudulent market practices. Then to really make us happy, he could adopt the recommendation of the “Captive Supply Reform Act” and require beef packers to actually bid in a transparent competitive market for their fat cattle supplies.

Now if Secretary Purdue did all that, I for one will break out of my slow cowboy two step shuffle and try some fancy Western Swing moves with my honey.