One of the most critical activities in an animal disease response is tracing the movement of animals. An efficient and accurate traceability system reduces the number of animals involved and response time required in a disease investigation, which in turn, reduces the economic impact on owners and affected communities.
As a result, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and state animal health officials in cooperation with industry stakeholders developed the Animal Disease Traceability Program to ensure official individual animal identification and premises identification traceability from farm to harvest.
To support this transition, Illinois Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Animal Health and Welfare is offering free electronic 840 tags to cattle and bison producers and veterinarians for use in replacement cattle through an agreement with USDA.
USDA APHIS Announces Final Animal Disease Traceability Rule
On April 26, 2024, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services announced the final rule to increase and strengthen animal disease traceability for certain cattle and bison.
The rule will take effect 180 days from publication in the Federal Register.
Key changes focus on electronic identification as the official identification for all sexually intact cattle and bison 18 months of age and older, all dairy cattle of any age, and any cattle used for rodeo, recreation or exhibition moving interstate. This identification will be required to be read visually and electronically. Visual ear tags applied to an animal prior to the effective date of the rule will be recognized for the lifetime of that animal.
In addition, the rule will change the definition of dairy cattle to “All cattle, regardless of age or sex or current use, that are of a breed(s) or offspring of a breed used to produce milk or other dairy products for human consumption, including, but not limited to Ayrshire, Brown Swiss, Holstein, Jersey, Guernsey, Milking Shorthorn, and Red and Whites.”
Rule met with producer contention
With a price of about $3.50 per head, the new rule has been met with resistance from some producers.
“It’s no surprise that while USDA claims this EID mandate is to improve disease control, it proudly discloses in the rule’s accompanying press release that ‘the most significant benefits of the rule’ is to maintain foreign markets,” R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard said.
“This is because the beneficiaries of this rule are not cattle producers or consumers. Instead, this rule is intended to benefit multinational beef packers and multinational eartag manufacturers who will profit at the expense of cattle producers and consumers. In fact, because the rule is cost-prohibitive for independent cattle producers, the agency is using millions of taxpayer dollars to give millions of their unnecessary EID eartags away.
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