Mike Callicrate | No-Bull Food News

Video by Tiffany Schilling – April, 2023

Seattle Times

Washington farmers have beef with imported meat: Food fight ensues over labeling

Thursday, April 25, 2002, 12:00 a.m. Pacific

By Lynda V. Mapes
Seattle Times staff reporter

OKANOGAN, Okanogan County — Kirk Kramer noses his dad’s 1949 Chevy pickup through a river of Black Angus, worrying aloud about beef prices, trade barriers and whether labeling meat by the country of its origin would give American farmers a better chance in the marketplace.

These days, globalization is even putting the squeeze on a guy with a 2-mile-long driveway.

Cheap foreign labor and environmental costs, trade barriers and a strong U.S. dollar have farmers and ranchers from Okanogan to Orlando struggling against a rising tide of food imports.

Given the opportunity, Kramer and independent family farmers like him are betting U.S. consumers will choose to buy American if Congress will impose mandatory new labeling laws on everything from pork chops to asparagus.

“… a single patty can contain meat from as many as 1,082 animals from the United States and abroad.”

“Most every widget and gadget in the store says where it is made,” said Kramer, who helps run his family’s nearly 9,000-acre ranch. “It seems like a no-brainer to me that people would like to know where their food comes from.”

The issue is coming to a head this week as a congressional conference committee works to find agreement on new rules for food labeling as part of the 2002 Farm Bill.

Packing houses, retailers and other food-industry giants are fighting country-of-origin labeling, which they say adds hassle and expense to a global food-production system focused on low cost and high efficiency.

“This has nothing to do with the right to know and everything about protectionists wanting to kill imports,” said Sara Lilygren from the American Meat Institute in Arlington, Va., which represents packing houses.

Cheap food imports are an important cog in what has become a global processing and distribution machine.

Nearly 42 percent of all fresh fruit consumed in the United States was imported in 2000, as was 14 percent of all fresh vegetables and melons, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

A total of 16 percent of all beef consumed in the United States is imported, most of it by packing houses that blend low-cost imported beef with fat trimmings from higher-end domestic-beef cuts to produce that ubiquitous American meal, the fast-food burger.

“They just want to be able to get their meat anywhere they can, as cheaply as they can and get a bigger profit.”

“We are being killed by the hamburger market, and it is because of imported meat,” said Rod Haeberle, a third-generation rancher in Conconully, Okanogan County.

Haeberle is frank about why he wants country-of-origin labeling: “I am hoping it will put my foreign competitors out of business.”

The reason for the opposition by retailers and packing houses is simple, according to Kramer. “They just want to be able to get their meat anywhere they can, as cheaply as they can and get a bigger profit.”

But what impact a labeling law would have is disputed.

Exemptions already carved in even the more stringent version of the bill offered by Senate members mean as little as 3 percent of the beef sold in groceries would be labeled by country of origin.

That is because all food service, frozen and processed meat would be exempt from the labeling law. That knocks out most imported meat because the vast majority is beef imported for hamburger that finds its way to fast-food restaurants.

McDonald’s rocked the meat industry earlier this month with its announcement that it would begin buying Australian and New Zealand beef for burgers served in 400 of 13,000 restaurants, opening its door to beef imports for the first time. McDonald’s is by far the largest purchaser of U.S. beef, so the company’s so-called “test” purchase, destined for restaurants in the Southeast, set off alarms.

Hamburger is one of the thorniest aspects of the labeling debate.

There is no uniform tracing system in place now that would allow a retailer to know, in many cases, where the animals that make up the meat in his grocery case came from. In the case of hamburger, a single patty can contain meat from as many as 1,082 animals from the United States and abroad, according to a January 1998 study by researchers at the University of Colorado.

Opponents of labeling worry customers could be put off by disclosure of the international pedigree of some hamburger in their grocery.

“This is the farthest this has ever gotten. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the food industry doesn’t still get it stripped out.”

“What would the consumer impact be should a consumer walk into a retail store and pick up a product that says ‘Product of Canada, Mexico, and the United States’? ” asked Bryan Dierlam, director of legislative affairs for the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, based in Washington, D.C.

“We want to have answers to that before this bill goes through.”

There is a lot at stake for ranchers like Kramer and Haeberle, 53, the third generation to work his 7,500-acre family ranch, a picturesque spread of grassland and sage sprinkled with bounding deer.

A post-and-beam barn at the heart of his operation, constructed nearly a century ago from giant timbers hand-hewn with a froe and secured with wooden pegs, is testimony to his family’s deep roots in Okanogan cattle country.

Haeberle’s herd of about 600 cattle will become the prime cuts of beef sold in steakhouses around the country and world. But as much as a quarter of his bottom line comes from the sale of cull cattle for hamburger — and he got more for the sale of those cattle 25 years ago than he does today.

Washington growers of asparagus, tree fruit, raspberries and other crops getting killed by imports also back a labeling law, which they say would boost the market for U.S. products.

“The ideal would be that somebody going into the store would have the same information buying an apple, a strawberry or a grape as they do a T-shirt,” said Chris Schlect, president of the Northwest Horticultural Council, which represents the tree-fruit industry in Washington, Oregon and Idaho.

Labeling produce has its own problems. Onions shed their skin, lettuce is wet and wholesalers often mix the produce they obtain before selling it to retailers, so the retailer doesn’t know for sure where every lemon, orange or mushroom they sell comes from.

Despite the obstacles, some meats and produce already are labeled on a voluntary basis. Labeling produce by country of origin is already the law in Florida, where the state has estimated the annual cost of its mandatory produce-labeling law to be less than $250,000 for the entire industry.

Washington state lawmakers passed a bill last session that requires all Washington produce to be labeled by retailers. But there is no penalty for noncompliance — Gov. Gary Locke stripped fines for failing to label out of the bill, in favor of a nonpunitive approach.

Some consumer advocates favor labeling of both meat and produce for public-health reasons.

April, 2023 – TRUTH in labeling must be a goal we strive for. Under current regulations, meat companies can import from a foreign country, but because it was butchered and packaged in the United States, they are allowed to put “Made in the USA” stickers on the package in deliberate efforts to deceive.

Caroline Smith De Waal, director of food safety for The Center for Science in the Public Interest, in Washington, D.C., said she sees no greater incidence of disease outbreaks from imported than domestic food. But when there is an outbreak of a food-borne illness, labeling would enable a quicker and more informed public-health and consumer response, De Waal said.

“The major benefit we get is a better ability to trace raw produce or meat that has been identified in a food-borne illness outbreak.”

Ultimately, the consumer group would like to see a larger labeling program that includes domestic products, with food traced all the way back to its farm of origin.

For now, just getting country of origin labeling will be a struggle, De Waal predicted.

“This is the farthest this has ever gotten. But I wouldn’t be surprised if the food industry doesn’t still get it stripped out.”

Lynda V. Mapes can be reached at 206-464-2736 or lmapes@seattletimes.com.

Copyright © 2002 The Seattle Times Company

Mike Callicrate says he was nearly driven out of business by a packing company that refused to buy cattle after he wrote an article criticizing the company. (Karen Krien/Special to The Wichita Eagle)

Market dominance of huge agribusiness firms has some farmers crying foul; others say it’s a natural evolution of the industry

SUNDAY August 22, 1999

By Eric Palmer
Knight Ridder News Service

A vocal critic of the power of big business, Kansas feedlot operator Mike Callicrate believes his stand just about cost him his business this year. In January it had been weeks since his best customer, Farmland National Beef Packing, had bid on cattle.

Callicrate had written a livestock journal article criticizing National’s move into buying cattle on contracts. He thinks contracts depress cash prices at feedlots like his, a 12,000-head operation near St. Francis in northwest Kansas. He heard National was mad about the criticism.

“They went from buying most of our cattle to buying nothing,” Callicrate said. “It meant bankruptcy pretty damn quick.”

“Without question, they are exerting abusive market power,” said Callicrate

Callicrate notified the U.S. Department of Agriculture of his suspicions, then set about preparing to close his feedlot. The USDA filed a complaint against Farmland National for blacklisting Callicrate, a charge the company denies.

Callicrate says the government’s inquiries prompted other packers to take up the slack and he staved off closure, although he says he lost tens of thousands of dollars. He thinks the episode represents an abuse of market power being wielded regularly against small operations by agribusiness companies that have been merging into global giants.

“Without question, they are exerting abusive market power,” said Callicrate, who also is a party to a lawsuit over similar alleged practices against IBP, the nation’s largest meat packer. “We have companies today that are so large they are almost bulletproof. They have so much money and so much political power that it is almost impossible to get justice.”

Suspicion always has tinged the dealings between independent-spirited farmers and the pin-striped corporations to which they sell. That suspicion has magnified the last two years as mergers in the agriculture industry have left farmers with fewer buyers for their crops and livestock even as prices have been free falling and family farms have succumbed.

Large agribusiness companies deny they are acting anticompetitively. Agriculture economists say it is normal market forces, not monopolistic power, driving both the mergers of large companies and the collapse of commodity prices.

“It certainly begins to limit our choices,” said Mark Taddiken of the mergers. He raises soybeans, corn and milo near Clifton in north central Kansas. “Whether that’s bad or not I guess time will tell.”

Dealing with big business

Farmers such as Taddiken have little choice but to do business with the giants of agriculture. Huge agribusiness firms supply the seed, fertilizer, machinery and chemicals that farmers need to produce crops and livestock. They also buy most of what farmers produce.

Taddiken and thousands of other farmers have signed agreements with Monsanto Co. that would have been unheard of not long ago.

That’s not all bad, he said, because big companies have the resources to develop products that — when marketed fairly — can benefit the farmer and the company alike. In the past three years, Taddiken and thousands of other farmers have signed agreements with Monsanto Co. that would have been unheard of not long ago.

Through its biotechnology research, Monsanto developed soybean plants that are not killed by Roundup, a cheap and effective weed-killer also developed by Monsanto. It cuts his herbicide costs to about $15 an acre, rather than the $25 to $40 an acre he had been spending.

But there’s a catch: A farmer who grows the Roundup-ready beans signs a contract agreeing not to save any of the soybeans for replanting the next year, or for selling to other farmers for replanting. The agreement gives Monsanto the right to review farmers’ production and sales figures — information farmers typically share only with their banker.

The penalty for violating the terms of the contract can be stiff.

Taddiken has no regrets.

“You make an agreement and if you keep it, everything’s fine,” he said.

And he can’t argue with the results. Last week, as he took a visitor on a tour of his farm, a Roundup-ready field on one side of the road was lush with soybeans and nothing else. On the other side, in a field planted with a traditional variety, weeds were nearly as plentiful as soybeans.

“We’re controlling weeds that over the years have been difficult to control,” Taddiken said.

Still, as he looks at what’s happening in agriculture, he’s concerned about the future. Seed companies and crop protection companies are merging, he said, and they’re starting to get involved in processing farm products as well. That puts the companies in a powerful position to determine what is grown on farms and what will be done with the crops.

“You begin to wonder, down the road, whether we’ll just be contract growers,” Taddiken said. “I don’t think there’s a big evil plan out there against us. I just think that’s the way the industry’s headed.”

An industrial model

Many agriculture experts say the loss of family farms is the result of an agricultural system that is rapidly, and inevitably, becoming more industrialized.

They say farming is fast becoming about bigger farms, global markets, contracts with meatpackers to sell genetically specific livestock, contracts with grain companies to grow genetically specific crops, high-technology systems and competition from corporate farms.

The farmers who will survive this transition, they say, will be distinguished as much by their grasp of technology and their business acumen as by their skill at growing a healthy field of corn.

Some family farmers are themselves indirect players in the merger game as their farm cooperatives join forces to better compete.

In May, the nation’s two largest farm cooperatives — Farmland Industries of Kansas City, Mo., and Cenex-Harvest States of St. Paul, Minn. –announced plans to merge. It would create a system with about $17 billion in annual sales.

Those co-ops are owned by hundreds of local co-ops which, in turn, are owned by farmers.

If small farmers are to survive, their cooperatives must learn the lessons of global competition, said Harry Cleberg, chief executive of Farmland — which, incidentally, owns Farmland National Beef, the packing company Callicrate clashed with.

“Wal-Mart figured out a more effective way of delivering products from the manufacturer to the consumer. Those competitors who couldn’t adapt died off,” Cleberg said. “For a producer to be a player rather than a hired hand, so to speak, we must put together a cooperative that has a better, more cost-efficient, supply chain.”

Mergers in agribusiness have become as commonplace as those in banking or telecommunications. In recent years Monsanto merged with DeKalb Genetics Corp. in a $2.3 billion deal, then picked up a leading cotton seed producer for $1.9 billion.

Dupont spent $7.7 billion to buy seed company Pioneer Hi-Bred. Farm implement maker New Holland has offered $4.3 billion to buy competitor Case Corp.

Minnesota-based Cargill, the nation’s largest grain buyer, last month acquired the worldwide grain operations of Continental Grain Co., the second-largest. At an estimated $400 million, it was small compared to other mergers, but it bothered many farmers and got reaction from members of Congress.

The deal was approved by the U.S. Justice Department only after Cargill agreed to sell off elevators in areas where the department said Cargill would have too much market muscle.

The facts of the market

“If these companies become more efficient, and if we maintain competition, they should lower costs and the farmer benefits,” Flinchbaugh said.

The economics that have led to mergers are simple, explained Barry Flinchbaugh, an economist with Kansas State University. Bigger companies can lower their costs by producing more product in bigger facilities with fewer people. Where some farmers see conspiracies by big business to lower farm prices, he sees economics at work.

“If these companies become more efficient, and if we maintain competition, they should lower costs and the farmer benefits,” Flinchbaugh said.

Economists point to the fact that even as food companies have gotten bigger, U.S. consumers have spent a declining amount of their disposable income on food, 10.8 percent last year, down from more than 13 percent in 1981.

More of that food dollar is going to wholesalers and retailers, acknowledged Bill MacLeod, an attorney for the Grocery Manufacturers of America. The difference, MacLeod said, has to do with further processing of food.

“Especially ready-to-eat foods,” MacLeod said. “There is more labor and more expense now between the farmer and the consumer.”

U.S. agribusiness companies say the mergers reflect their need to get market position to compete with some of the largest companies in the world.

Frank Sims, president of Cargill’s North American Grain operations, said the merger with Continental was part of a restructuring of the food and agribusiness industries that is being mirrored at the farm level as they adapt to new trends.

“Producers are changing faster than we are. In terms of consolidation, all the data I see from USDA suggests that there is as much consolidation and restructuring on the farm,” he said.

Agribusiness companies are getting bigger, but so are farms. That has been the trend for at least 50 years, said Dick Gady, chief economist and vice president of public affairs for ConAgra in Omaha, the nation’s second-largest food company.

Gady said his company hates that the trend has raised suspicions among its customers.

“It bothers us that legislatures are villainizing agribusiness companies. It bothers us that our suppliers mistrust us,” Gady said. “I think higher prices and better markets would dissipate a lot of that, although not all.”

Let’s make a deal

About 18 months ago, Dale Whiteside and his sons made a decision that dramatically changed the way they farmed. It also put them among those undertaking one of the most controversial practices in agriculture, one that underscores farmers’ concerns about how corporations are changing their place in the world.

“We used to be totally independent. Now we grow and finish, but we don’t own the pigs.”

They decided to raise pigs on contract for Farmland Industries.

The Whitesides used to own sows that produced the pigs they would raise and sell at market for the best price they could get. Now, Farmland delivers 10-pound pigs to their farm and the rations to feed them. They will raise about 28,000 pigs this year and get paid per pig for taking care of them until they are ready to be slaughtered.

“We used to be totally independent. Now we grow and finish, but we don’t own the pigs,” Whiteside said from his farm near Chillicothe, Mo.

With the contract, they were able to get the financing to build the facilities they needed to compete with corporate hog farms, Whiteside said. It also saved them when hog prices last year dropped to their lowest point in decades.

“It wasn’t my druthers. I liked being independent, but the train was coming down the track,” Whiteside said. “It looked to me like it was time to share the risk with someone in packing.”

Vertical integration, where large corporations own a product from farm to plate, has become controversial on several levels. It has put companies in competition with the farmers they traditionally have bought from. It eliminates the need for much of the expertise of farmers. The companies determine the breeding of the animals and what they are fed.

There are advantages to the large meat processors being able to buy much of the livestock through contracts, said Gady of ConAgra.

“We like it because we can buy genetically the kind of animals we need to satisfy consumers,” Gady said. “We’ve got these monster plants we have got to fill up every day. It does help to have at least some of that contracted.”

It is not a one-way street, however, Gady explained.

“It gives producers a guaranteed market. It can reduce their pricing risk, which can help them get financing,” Gady said. It also pays producers a premium if they raise higher-quality animals, he said.

If any good comes out of low commodity prices, some farmers think, it will be that the hardship got Washington to pay attention to their concerns over concentration.

The Justice Department has agreed to look closer at concentration in agribusiness.

The Senate is considering legislation that would require meat packers nationally to report each day’s prices to the USDA.

The USDA, which has authority over consolidation in the meat packing industry, is again looking at that industry for signs of anti-competitive practices.

The USDA has investigated the situation several times but never found evidence that concentration has caused “tangible harm” to livestock producers.

“Meat packing has gotten more concentrated, leaving farmers with less bargaining power,” said U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Dan Glickman. “We are looking aggressively at how to get farmers more bargaining clout.”

A University of Missouri study showed that four large firms in each sector buy and slaughter four out of five beef cattle, three out of four sheep, three out of five hogs and half of all chickens.

The USDA has investigated the situation several times but never found evidence that concentration has caused “tangible harm” to livestock producers.

Regulators warn they cannot stop the transformation of agribusiness being driven by technology and globalization, but maybe they can mitigate some of the adverse effects.

“Some people are going out of business. That is the state of things,” said Keith Collins, chief economist for the USDA. “While we cannot intervene in markets, we can ensure fairness and competition.”

Contributing: Steve Painter of The Eagle, Lance Nixon in Aberdeen, S.D., Worth Wren in Fort Worth, Texas, Kevin Bonham in Grand Forks, N.D., and Lee Egerstrom in St. Paul, Minn.

Improving the lives of pigs can make life better for all of us

The pig is a long-time friend of the human species, an essential contributor to our food supply and rural economies. Once known as the mortgage lifter, the pig and the farmer prospered on family farms, mostly across the Midwest.

Nearly all family farm pig operations were driven out of business after the price crash of 1998, orchestrated by the highly concentrated pork industry. Farmers lost their farms in droves, many becoming contractors and hog house janitors for very the corporations that rigged the market. Livelihoods and communities were lost, and pigs were forced to live in conditions never imagined possible.

To free the pig, we must free the farmer.

Last week, at Oklahoma State University (OSU), Oklahoma City, the Kirkpatrick Foundation hosted a gathering in support of a better food system, including more humane treatment of pigs. Attendees included politicians, veterinarians, animal welfare, good food, and healthy community advocates. Especially welcome, were students enrolled in the Registered Veterinary Technician (RVT) curriculum, housed on campus in the John Kirkpatrick Building.

The Kirkpatrick family is a long-time animal welfare advocate, instrumental in defeating the 2016 Right to Farm State Question 777, more accurately known as “Right to Harm.”

The ballot initiative would have given multinational corporations the right to locate highly polluting and community wrecking pig and poultry factories anywhere they wanted to, undermining the interests of Oklahoma citizens, independent family farmers and ranchers, rural communities, and our national food security.

I think it’s important to recognize the complicity of Oklahoma State University, like many other land-grant institutions supporting a corporate controlled form of industrial agriculture, in the demise of our nation’s family farms and ranches, decline of rural places, and in the loss of the our ability to feed ourselves.

My presentation follows:

Click HERE to see slideshow fullscreen

Nothing will change as long as big companies control the market

By Mike Callicrate

Post Pandemic – Nothing has Changed – Nearly every person in America has seen the empty grocery shelves, the sick and dying meat plant workers, the massive piles of composted and incinerated pigs and chickens, and the price gouging – we’re still suffering the price gouging. Nearly every person in America has witnessed how fragile and broken our food system is, so why has so little, if anything, changed?

Historian Barbara Tuchman asks the question in her 1984 book, The March of Folly, why do governments pursue policies contrary to their own interests when feasible alternatives are clearly available? “Why did the Trojan rulers drag the suspicious-looking wooden horse inside their walls despite every reason to suspect a Greek trick?”

And today, as we consider a new farm bill, we should ask, why have we allowed a handful of multinational corporations, including JBS, a crime family from Brazil, Smithfield, a state-owned entity from China, and Cargill and Tyson, both powerful global predators with long criminal records, to dominate our food system? We clearly have better alternatives for feeding ourselves. Why are we a net food importer when we can feed ourselves a healthy diet from a more resilient, diverse, decentralized, and far safer domestic food system? Why is Senator Booker from New Jersey nearly alone in speaking out against the grave injustices, and our members of Congress from the State of Colorado, where JBS and Cargill have major operations, are silent?

Today, this handful of highly subsidized and favored multinational companies are in full control of our food system including the main agency mandated to regulate them, the United States Department of Agriculture. The non-subsidized ideal farms and ranches we desperately need for a better world are shut out of the national market. Leading the way towards a safer, more resilient, and most recently, regenerative form of agriculture, the very best producers, in this fool’s game, are forced to sell below-cost-of-production in a predatory market. Only their stolen identities make it to the end consumer.

People looking to support better agricultural practices continue to be deceived with various bait and switch schemes. These false claims and misleading labels hide the very worst of production practices, from animal cruelty, worker abuse, to environmental degradation, driving these ideal operators off the shelves, out of the kitchens, and out of business. Every profitable niche created by our very best producers has been stolen by the industrial pretenders. You can’t change the food world with your fork if you can’t tell what’s on your plate. This is food fraud.

While farmers and ranchers do most of the work, take nearly all the risk, and invest over 80% of the capital required to produce food, they’re treated as just another cost to be reduced on the food cartel’s income statement. We need fewer MBAs and more Master Butchers.

In support of best practices in food production, new projects, using the latest in technology, are working on new platforms for connecting producers to buyers, identifying high production standards, food origin, animal welfare, better environmental practices, etc.  Understanding the current landscape is critical – the reason most every other attempt to build directories and food guides has failed. If the power buyers, including the biggest institutional buyers, big retail, food management, and food service companies remain in control, nothing will change. Ideal producers have no way of surviving any pathway to market that is controlled by the greedy too-big-to-regulate and too-big-to-fail food companies.

After decades of market concentration, and many years of niche brand companies either selling out, or going bankrupt, isn’t it time we did something different? The fact is, agriculture and our food system have gradually been transformed into an industrial mining operation through anti-competitive practices and abusive market power, consuming valuable resources, depleting our soils, and starving our farms and ranches of the income necessary to remain on the land and be the stewards and husbandmen we need. For the last couple of decades, as the most ideal producers have gone out of business, we’ve been told by companies like Whole Foods to be patient and accept the idea of incremental change, which they say will eventually lead to a more just, humane, and sustainable food system. As with the labels on their food, we’ve been misled. We’ve lost too much to settle for a few percentage points of change.

To suggest this extremely profitable, near monopoly food cartel can now be part of a sustainable food system, after decades of strip-mining rural America and the globe, leaving degraded land, pollution, hungry people, and broken communities behind, is nonsense. It’s like expecting a wolf to go vegan. Why would the growth obsessed shareholders and executives of the world’s largest agriculture and food companies support any change, relinquishing the only things they care about – power and profits?

I’m convinced, only a decentralized and fully transparent food system, separate and apart from the existing corporate controlled industrial model, can heal the Earth, ensure all may eat, and the husbandman will always be the first partaker of the fruit.

So why does something so dysfunctional survive? Because it’s what we support.

By Gilles Stockton

February 16, 2023

Once again, the Department of Agriculture (USDA) is insisting that cattle in interstate commerce be identified with an electronic ear tag (EID). (see: Use of Electronic Identification Eartags as Official Identification in Cattle and Bison. Federal Register. Vol. 88, No 12, January 19, 2023. Page 3320) As in the many previous attempts to impose this on cattle producers, they claim that it is necessary to respond to the introduction of Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD).

“What USDA does not explain is how will having the millions of cattle moving interstate and identified with an expensive EID tag, actually contribute to the control of an FMD outbreak.”

What USDA does not explain is how will having the millions of cattle moving interstate and identified with an expensive EID tag, actually contribute to the control of an FMD outbreak. Obviously, it will take a lot more than just an ear tag to successfully stop FMD – if that is even possible. First off, why are we importing fresh meat from countries with endemic FMD?  Someone benefits from this commerce and it is not the American cattle producers. Shouldn’t prevention be the first line of defense?

FMD is a very infectious, fast developing disease with twenty-five different variants, each needing its own vaccine. It affects all cloven-hoofed animals including whitetail deer and feral pigs. Before you even know your herd is infected, up to two weeks will have passed. Samples from infected animals would be sent to a special lab to identify the variant, requiring more time to pass before the proper vaccine can be ordered.  And then it takes a minimum of two more weeks to unfreeze and prepare the vaccine for administration.

The point is that under the most optimistic of scenarios it will take at least five weeks to even vaccinate the first animal. Of what possible benefit would it have been to have electronically identified cattle in anticipation of a future outbreak of FMD? In all probability, veterinary authorities, once they have identified FMD, will stop all movement of livestock and then watch for clinical symptoms to appear. The initial surveillance phase will include all herds of cloven-hoofed animals everywhere in the United States, Canada, and Mexico.

“The current requirements for identification of cattle moving interstate are working, as evidenced by the fact that the state and federal veterinarians are successfully tracing down the outbreaks of tuberculosis.”

Once they can start to vaccinate, the hope is to contain the disease in pockets. We can assume that all of the vaccinated animals will be identified with an ear tag – EID or conventional. But having cattle pre-tagged would have been a waste of time and money, because knowing from where a cow came is not useful.  Only the appearance of clinical symptoms is meaningful.

The current requirements for identification of cattle moving interstate are working, as evidenced by the fact that the state and federal veterinarians are successfully tracing down the outbreaks of tuberculosis. While here in the mountain states, they are also on top of brucellosis. If a cow has a registered brand, a metal bangs tag, and a legible tattooed shield in the ear, that should be enough.  Yes, when vaccinating for brucellosis the vet can put in one of the official EID tags.  But will that tag still be in the ear, ten or twelve years later when you sell that cow? The metal tag may or may not make it that long, but the EID tag most probably will not.

Ultimately USDA wants all cattle electronically identified, but so far, they still exempt beef feeder cattle under eighteen months of age. However, this time they propose that all dairy feeder cattle be tagged. Dairy cows are already required to have tags. If I was a dairy farmer, I would probably use an electronic identification record keeping system, so that is not a major issue for some.  But is it legitimate to require that the crossbred dairy feeder cattle also be identified?  I am not so sure.  I fear that once they require that dairy feeders are tagged, it won’t be long before they insist that all feeder cattle are EID tagged.

We risk importing FMD because our government’s trade policies favor beef importers over the well-being of our domestic cattle producers. The same can be said for tuberculosis. If our country continues to allow cattle from Mexico, we will be responding to outbreaks of TB forever.  However, the current traceability regulations are obviously working although I am sure that this system is tedious and frustrating for those tasked to implement it. Nevertheless, veterinary authorities have been able to stay ahead of TB. Perhaps what they actually need are more clerical staff. Whatever!

“Another interesting fact is that this rule making makes no requirements of the beef packers or importers of beef.”

When it comes to brucellosis, we have the National Park Service to thank.  If there was a will, there would be a way to vaccinate Yellowstone Park’s bison, and this country would be rid of that source of brucellosis. After all there are only about 5000 head of buffalo in Yellowstone Park. However, elk would still be carrying brucellosis. If their overpopulation was dealt with, maybe that risk would also be reduced.

Another interesting fact is that this rule making makes no requirements of the beef packers or importers of beef.  Only U.S. producers are required to work their cattle, insert expensive EID tags, and keep records. Obviously, in the slaughterhouse, identification (electronic or not) needs to stay correlated to the carcass and the meat cuts in question or else the whole exercise is useless. It is my understanding that packers are only required to keep identity to the point that the carcass has been cleared by an inspector.

“Since USDA proposes to identify animals to their source, shouldn’t they also require that the chain of identity continues to the meat counter?”

In this opinion piece I have focused on addressing animal diseases such as FMD, but what about food born illnesses such as salmonella when beef may be contaminated with feces in the slaughter process. Since USDA proposes to identify animals to their source, shouldn’t they also require that the chain of identity continues to the meat counter? Consumers should have the choice of buying beef born on my ranch in Montana versus beef from what had been the Amazon rainforest in Brazil. And if anyone gets sick, the slaughter plant in question should be held accountable.

This brings up the principal of equivalency. Production and slaughter processes in the counties that export beef to the United States are supposed to be equivalent to ours.  Will foreign producers also be required to identify their cattle with EID tags and will the packer/importers be required track that information to the retail level? Clearly, we producers in the U.S. feel cheated by the supposition that livestock production and slaughter in Brazil and Nicaragua is equivalent to ours. Obviously American inspectors are not standing on the slaughter lines in those countries.  Who is, and are they meeting the equivalent standards that are supposed to be happening here?

“… Australia made themselves a mess with their EID system and now have an entire herd of “ghost” cattle.”

Finally, as carcasses pass inspection and move on to retail, the ID number should be retired. It is my understanding that Australia made themselves a mess with their EID system and now have an entire herd of “ghost” cattle. This USDA rulemaking makes no requirement as to the final disposition of the identification information. In fact, USDA is rather weak on the whole issue of where this ID information is kept and who has access to that information. In fact, this whole EID mandate relies heavily on private veterinarians. I would suggest that any veterinarian reading this, take a look at this proposed rule and see if you are comfortable with it.

It has been about twenty years now that USDA has been obsessed with imposing EID on the cattle industry.  You would think that given that time frame they would have been able to come up with a fully workable plan. Perhaps they feel that it is easier to require producers to pay for EID tags than ask Congress to fund a proper system capable of actually responding to an outbreak of a foreign animal disease such as FMD.

Cattle producers understand the need for a reliable and efficient system capable of controlling an introduced disease, and FMD is not the only one out there that could cause us trouble. But requiring producers use EID tags without assuring us the other necessary bits and pieces of the system are in place is not a good way for USDA to get our support.

USDA tells us that currently it takes weeks or months to trace down TB infected herds.  But nearly all dairies already use EID tags, so what is the problem, at least when concerning dairy cows? Many beef producers also use electronic tag record keeping systems. It is coming voluntarily so why mandate it? Maybe an incentive to use EID technology would be in order?

Still sometimes the old ways are the best ways. Here in Montana, they recently had a TB incident in a beef cow herd. The State Veterinarian put a whole lot of resources to control it and apparently one of the most useful forms of identification was the hot iron brand. My point is that most cattle producers are willing to comply with animal identification requirements if USDA can show that they have a plan that covers all of the bases and that it will be worth the time and investment.

The comment deadline is March 20^th 2023 just when many of you are recovering from long nights checking on cattle, but you need to take a look at this and make up your own mind if requiring EID tags is appropriate.

Gilles Stockton
Grass Range, Montana