Based on the Australian experience John spells the reasons why US Livestock Producers should fight Mandatory Livestock Identification “to the last Cowboy”. This article is an extract taken from NSW cattle producer and Australian Beef Association (ABA) member John Carters address to the R-CALF USA annual conference in Omaha Nebraska.
“Australia, being a desert island in the middle of a huge ocean has the least disease of any continent. Despite this, Australia has had Premises ID for cattle since 1980. We used a paper or plastic wrap-around tail tag that had to be affixed before sale. Around 1990, I got individual animal numbers put on those tags for use in producer carcass quality discovery. It was hardly ever used.
(Photo below is left to right, fifth, sixth and seventh generation Australian cattlemen John, Ben and James Carter at work in the Cattle yards at the family property near the nations Capital - Canberra.)
Three years ago I spoke to you in Denver. I advised you not to allow mandatory RFID (radio frequency identification) to be foisted on you because it would be very costly and it wouldn’t work. I am back today to tell you that I was right.
In those three years, Australian cattle producers have been the fall guys for the international tag manufacturers. Follow the money. Put your money on self-interest - you always know that it is trying.
ABA has no problem with voluntary RFID use. If I were unfortunate enough to own a feedlot, I would use it in many ways to save (from) feeding inefficient cattle.
Mandatory tracing is an entirely different matter. We have abandoned our efficient mandatory tail tag system for expensive chaos.
(Below is a photo of the Country where the Carter Family has grazed cattle since 1853)
No other large-producing country has mandated the RFID traceback system.
All the reasons given for its introduction are now in tatters. Face-saving and blame have replaced them. Remember an ounce of prevention is worth pounds of cure. Don’t let anyone take you (US producers) down this suicidal path because once you are on it,
- it will become the unchangeable custom and be used by your packers (meatworks) to discount your cattle.
- Its administration will cost you a fortune -
- all for no purpose but to increase tag-manufacturer profit and give jobs to bureaucrats.
In Australia, the tag manufacturers beat us with lies and propaganda.
They provided letters to the papers signed by producers who didn’t exist amidst a flood of propaganda.
At one stage, the rural press did a poll on NLIS (National Livestock Identification Scheme) acceptance by producers on one of its farm polls on the Internet. On Day Three the poll showed 75 percent of producers voting the NLIS as being hopeless or a failure. About 10 percent were approving. In two hours, this was reversed. Fortunately, ABA had a computer fanatic following the vote and trying to boost the negative vote.
We immediately did a press release stating that the poll was being fixed. It was withdrawn and hasn’t been attempted since. Investigations showed that hackers had the poll alteration from the database team at MLA (Meat and Livestock Australia) - our Beef Board. We called for a full disclosure.
MLA spent $81,000 of OUR MONEY on their auditors investigating, refused to release the results, and did not sack the two hackers. One can only presume that someone above had instructed them. A divisional head noted for his careful work resigned and was appointed as Integrity Officer by the packer organisation.
Reasons that tag manufacturers used with their stooges in Government, the packers and our NCBA equivalent.
Their Claim - “Greater Market Access”.
The Reality -In 2003, we were told that we had to have mandatory RFID (NLIS) because the USA was getting it and we would lose market share to the U.S. in Japan and Korea. The U.S., with no RFID (NLIS), is now regaining its market share in Japan and will get back into Korea despite your two cases of BSE (Mad Cow Disease). Australian producers are getting 60 percent of your prices. Brazil and Argentina - with no RFID (NLIS) - send many times Australia’s small 6,000-ton quota to Europe.
Their Claim -”Customers are demanding it”.
The reality - This was a farce, as the system cannot trace beyond the packinghouse (meatworks). Inquiries in Japan showed that no one was asking for it. Our packers claimed that McDonald’s required RFID (NLIS). Knowing the U.S. situation, I rang the McDonald’s purchasing officer in Sydney. She denied ever making such a claim.
Their Claim - “Disease control”.
The reality - The inaccuracy of the system and its slowness has shown that it would be of little use in an outbreak of exotic disease. We are supposed to inform the database of any movement of any cattle off our ranches, including to another pasture. Very few are doing it. NLIS couldn’t track a bleeding elephant through a snowfield.
The minute tag number on the outside (readable with glasses) is different to the computer number inside. See the photo of this pen of my Limousin Angus cross steers below. What hope have you got to see the tag let alone the number.
Australia has been sold inferior tags by the multinationals - they think that we are stupid - I’m afraid that they are right.
(Two weeks ago, I did an audit of my account on the database. In three years, I have bought 900 tags. They are on the database. I have bought 92 cattle - 79 percent are on my account. I have sold 618 (like the pen of my cattle in the photo below) - 74 percent have been taken off the account.)
Their Claim - “Prevention of stock stealing”.
The reality - Australia has decided that RFID (NLIS) is not a legal means of identifying livestock because the tags can be easily cut out and substituted. The recent severe floods in Queensland have seen police and owners rely on the firebrand to identify the thousands of stock on other ranches.
However, enthusiastic bureaucrats are demanding the producers put orange RFID tags in the ears of cattle that they have identified as theirs on other ranches before they take them home. An orange tag indicates that the beast has no whole of life accountability and will be discounted by the packers (meatworks).
Their Claim - “Carcass feedback to producers”.
The reality - Our packinghouses (meatworks) were supposed to supply feedback to the breeder who put his tag in the ear when the beast was sold for the first time. They eventually agreed to give a carcass or a live weight but many are not doing it.
I have had the required carcass weight at abattoir (packer) when killed on 58 percent. I have had fat depths - wildly inaccurate - given on 14 percent. I have had 20 cattle killed on my account that could not have been mine. I have had 22 recorded as deceased on ranch that never died.
The photo below is of one of our carcases that won the Southern NSW Carcass judging last year.
Mandatory Livestock Identification hasn’t worked in any major beef-producing country.
United Kingdom
Their Auditor General’s Report on Livestock Tracking released on Nov. 12, 2003, should be compulsory reading for anyone involved. At that time they had 700 bureaucrats chasing 10 million cattle at an annual cost of $60 per head sold with 20 percent missing. The committee concluded that the system was “in complete chaos”. That is a paper trail system.
The UK lamb RFID trial release (late 2006). They concluded that it would not work as well as the paper trail and would cost the lamb producers so much that they would lose their European markets.
This has caused our sheep equivalent of your NCBA to say ‘NO - not without a cost-benefit analysis‘, which we had unsuccessfully demanded of MLA.
The sheep people don’t seem to like the idea of paying $3 for a tag for a sheep that they may sell for $1. This doesn’t seem unreasonable.
European Union (EU)
Their IDEA trial on RFID had not found RFID to be feasible.
Canada
I phoned the Canadian ID Agency on Monday (Feb. 18, 2008). I was told that their system of informing on stock movement is still voluntary and that few producers send in cattle movements to the agency, as they (the producers) are not computer literate!
This fact was obvious to ‘Blind Freddy’ in Australia and was uncovered in the EU trials. You can have the best computer database system in the world but it is garbage in garbage out.
Monumental Failure.
When we began this war in Australia, I said that there were 200,000 who sold cattle every year. MLA and your NCBA equivalent said that there were only 60,000. We now have 160,000 on the database. We have around 27 million cattle in Australia, and the last figure on the database showed many millions unaccounted for.
I live in one of the better areas with higher stocking rates and a controlled system. I have the equal oldest registered firebrand in Australia (1853). I have tattooed every calf born with that brand since 1955. My experience would be better than most. Linda Hewitt, who addressed you last year and is now in serious floods, with her family runs 15,000 cattle. She has had error notices from the database on thousands of cattle.
(Below is a photo of me in work “clobber” holding our family fire brand and tattoo earmaking pliers that we use to identify our cattle. Brands and earmarks don’t fall off, NLIS tags do.)
We have an international embarrassment on our hands because the tag companies bribed, cajoled and fooled those in power.
Those in power refused to do a cost-benefit analysis; they refused to do a trial. They mandated an impossible system and are now lying very low.
They have had two small inquiries, which produced what they paid for, but with very heavy qualifications on what needed to change to make it work. No senior bureaucrat, politician or NCBA equivalent will stand up and say that it is a success.
They know what any producer who goes into his account knows. It is as the UK Committee said of their system in 2003 - it is ‘in complete chaos’.
Fight this one down to the last cowboy. With 900,000 producers in 50 different state legislatures, your bureaucrats have even less chance of making it work than ours have.
That isn’t the point though - you must stop the transfer of your money to multinational tag manufacturers. Follow the money and don’t be fooled as we were. I think that you will win. Good luck and thank you.”
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Stephen Blair [pictured] must have really have upset some one in the powers that be.
