In a proposal released in late December, officials with the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) have announced that they are considering rule changes which, if enacted, would mandate the application of radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to all cattle over 18 months of age that change ownership in that state. While WSDA officials view the mandate as a necessary step to streamline their state’s animal disease tracking program, some cow-calf producers view it as an unnecessary, and costly, addition to a program that they say is already adequate.
Initially, the proposed rule changes would primarily require replacing the metal and plastic tags currently used for bangs vaccination and trichomoniasis testing with RFID tags. “Currently, within our regulations, when cattle receive a brucellosis vaccination, the veterinarian is also putting an official tag in the ear,” explains WSDA Animal Services Coordinator Jodi Jones. “In the past, that tag has been official ID in the form of a metal clip. When bulls are sampled for Trich [trichomoniasis], they are also receiving official identification.” “We also have a regulation that says that all cattle and bison that are over 18 months of age that are presented for sale at a livestock market also have to have official identification,” she adds. “These rules have been in place for many years. What we are doing is moving away from the metal tags and going to an electronic identification tag.”
“It’s for speed and efficiency,” explains WSDA spokesman Hector Castro. “The more electronic-based we can go, the faster we can trace animals in the event of an animal disease outbreak.” Washington is no stranger to such outbreaks. In 2003, the state became home to the first case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) found in the United States, a discovery that affected not only Washington cattle producers, but had a profound effect on livestock exports across the nation. In the wake of that disaster, Washington became one of several states, at least at the governmental level, to support a federal livestock tracking system. When that effort failed, Washington continued to develop programs designed to make it easier for officials to trace disease outbreaks to their source.
Currently, Washington’s Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) system relies on brand inspections, state health inspections, trichomoniasis test records, and any other ownership change or health information collected by the state. Data from all of these sources is collected into a single database, which can be accessed by WSDA personnel should an outbreak occur. According to Ted Wishon of the Cattle Producers of Washington (CPoW), an organization that bills itself as representing the state’s cow-calf producers, members of his organization understood the need for centralized access to this information.
“It’s built on sale yard records, vet inspections, and things like that,” he says. “We all agreed that the state had that information already, and that compiling it in a database would reduce the need to go through boxes of paperwork, and allow them to pull that information up quicker.” In order to maintain the database, producers pay a $0.23 assessment per head on livestock transactions.
While producers have so far been accepting of the ADT program, Wishon points out that the database has been operational for just a few years, too soon, he says, to start adding additional requirements. “It’s up and running, but it hasn’t reached maturity by any means,” he says. Among producers, he points out, there are some who view RFID technology with suspicion, regarding it as a sign of increased government intervention in their operations. CPoW members contend that this stigma, coupled with the added cost, will sour acceptance for the current program. “I believe that RFID has the potential to be a deterrent to animal health,” says Wishon. “There will be people that will not bangs vaccinate because of this. They truly feel that RFID means black helicopters, surveillance, and all kinds of other things. They don’t necessarily understand the simplicity of it.”
While simply replacing a metal bangs tag with RFID may seem innocuous, CPoW has argued that it is also first step towards requiring producers to report all animal movements to the state, an allegation that WSDA does not deny. “One of the ultimate goals, nationally and for our state, is to eventually end up with a traceability system that is an effective net capturing all livestock movement,” says Castro. “We are not there yet, but these have all been moves to get closer and closer to that point.”
At anywhere from $2 to $4 per tag, Castro says that WSDA agrees that added cost to the producer is a legitimate concern. However, he says, WSDA feels that those costs are outweighed by the benefit of the more efficient tracking system that they say RFID will provide. “You have to take advantage of those tools that are now available to us in the 21st century,” says Castro. There’s also the expectation that, because those tools are available, things should be done more efficiently and effectively, rather than relying on some of the older methods that didn’t always give us the results we would have liked.”
Within their proposal, WSDA also cites pressure from USDA as a reason for requiring the use of RFID, something that Wishon says he isn’t hearing from producers in other states. “I’ve talked with producers in Montana, Nebraska, Kansas, Idaho—none of them are hearing about anything coming their way in terms of this,” he says. “Why should Washington put themselves under an undue burden?”
In addition to tracking disease outbreaks, the WSDA proposal also touts mandatory RFID as a way to meet export requirements, both current and expected, something that CPoW argues should not be up to the state’s animal health department to address. “ADT is not a marketing tool,” says Wishon. “That information should go into a confidential database, and never be accessible unless there is a disease outbreak.” “If a producer opts to take that tag information and use it for marketing purposes, that’s fine,” he adds. “But the state can’t do that.”
At this point, Castro points out, the proposal is just that. “We haven’t even gotten to the point that we’re having hearings, we’re still meeting with the livestock industry to try and address their concerns, and to help them understand our reasons for why this is an important move to make,” he says. While public input will be part of the process, Castro indicates that it is not yet known when any hearings will be taking place. “Between now and those hearings, we will continue working with our industry partners in drafting what the proposed language would look like and sending that out to our industry partners along with the public hearing dates and locations.”
Despite these assurances, Wishon worries that cattlemen ultimately won’t have a voice in the final decision. “This is a rule change, not a law change,” he says. “Our legislators and our producers won’t get to vote on it. The director just decides that they’re going to change the rule.” “I don’t see where we’re bettering ourselves with this,” he adds. “We’ve got a program right now that’s not punching too many holes in our industry. The system isn’t broken, so why are we trying to fix it?” — Jason Campbell, WLJ correspondent
