US ranchers are wrangling over livestock

EDITOR'S NOTE: Yakima County is home to an estimated 286,432 meat and dairy cattle. It's also where the nation's first confirmed case of mad cow disease occurred six years ago. That discovery helped prompt efforts to develop a national system to track diseased animals. Reporter Erin Snelgrove traveled to Australia and reports today on how that nation developed such a program and how efforts are progressing here.

CLONCURRY, Australia -- Dust billows in the sun-drenched sky as 600 cattle charge through the chute. They act as one, a writhing mass of legs and hooves. Flies swarm in their wake, and ranchers stand on alert, ready to jump into the fray if needed.

As each animal passes, its ear tag transmits data that's entered into a national database, allowing authorities to track each animal from birth to death.

In a global economy, where mad cow, hoof and mouth and other diseases can crush a market overnight, the ability to track cattle can be crucial.

In Australia, where 65 percent of all beef is exported, it's especially critical.

"It gives us lifelong traceability," said Ray Campbell, who owns a 26,000-acre cattle operation in Cloncurry. "It gives us the edge in the world market. Australian beef is known as clean and green."

In the United States -- where discovery of a single case of mad cow disease at a Mabton dairy in December 2003 prompted Japan, Korea and others to ban U.S. beef imports for more than a year -- some see the Australian system as worth replicating.

Since 2004, the U.S. Department of Agriculture has been attempting to develop a program similar to Australia's.

But not everyone likes what the USDA has been proposing.

"This is overly intrusive, overly costly," said Bill Bullard, chief operating officer of R-CALF, a Billings, Mont.-based organization representing thousands of cattle producers in 47 states.

"There's no justification for the onerous regulatory scheme the USDA is proposing ... We think this is un-American."

Whether a system such as Australia's can be developed in the United States remains to be seen, but most in the Australian beef industry said they were glad a universal tracking system is in place.

"From time to time, individuals indicate it's a load of garbage," Campbell said. "But they're getting fewer and fewer."

As the world's second-largest beef exporter -- only Brazil exports more -- Australia had compelling reasons for ensuring its products are safe and marketable.

In the 1990s, it watched the spread of mad cow disease in England. Mad cow, or Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), is a chronic, degenerative disease affecting the central nervous system of cattle.

Scientists suspected that people who eat the brain, spinal cord or other infected tissues from BSE-infected cattle can develop the incurable and always-fatal variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease, which destroys the brain and causes dementia, memory loss, personality changes, hallucinations and other involuntary body movements.

The British government ultimately destroyed more than 4.3 million cattle as a safety measure because it didn't know which animals were infected.

In Australia, there was general agreement in the government and industry on the concept of a tracking system to identify which cattle may have been exposed to a disease, and even what they ate.

The Mabton case was suspected to have been caused by feed that a dairy cow ate in Canada that included brains and other internal cattle organs infected with BSE. However, authorities were unable to determine which other cattle might have eaten the same feed or where they ended up.

Despite the general consensus in Australia on the need for tracking, working out the details wasn't easy.

Ranchers, for example, were reluctant to disclose private business information, such as the number of cattle they owned, in the highly competitive beef market.

James Lord, owner of the May Downs cattle station, a 600,000-acre operation in Mount Isa, Australia, said cost was his top worry. Already, land rents were increasing and complaints about the cost of government regulation loom as large there as in the United States.

Ear tags alone cost the equivalent of about $2.80 U.S. each. For a large rancher, that can easily run into tens of thousands of dollars.

Lord now thinks the database has promise. One day it could be used to track fertility and weight -- data that could improve herd quality and economic returns.

In the meantime, he said the ability to trace diseases helps reassure international customers about product safety.

"We have a good, clean image. We have to maintain that image," he said.

The system works by clipping an ear tag encrypted with a 15-digit number to each animal. The code has the uniqueness of a Social Security number and is transmitted via radio or electronic frequencies to machines placed wherever cattle are being moved from one operation to another. The numbers in the machines are then transferred into a national database. Every time the animal moves to a different farm, ranch or stockyard, the database is updated.

By 2006, a system was in place to track the movements of every one of Australia's approximately 28 million cattle. Ranchers and producers are required to participate.

The database program, which includes proprietary information from ranchers, is administered by Meat and Livestock Australia, a privately operated, producer-owned company. The company collects the equivalent of $4.50 U.S. on the sale of each head of cattle. That money funds not only the tracking program but also a wide range of other activities, including international marketing and research and development.

Monitoring for compliance is conducted by each of Australia's state governments, and there are penalties for violations. While fines vary by location, they typically run the equivalent of $930 U.S., plus court costs.

Dale Saunders, a sale yard manager in Cloncurry, said the system isn't perfect.

"There are still a few kinks," he said. "We still have 10 percent to work on yet. ... As people learn to understand it, it's getting better."

Sometimes tags don't work or they fall out, and sometimes people will transfer cattle without reading the tags properly. Still, there's a general acceptance.

"I feel it's been effective," said Campbell, a Cloncurry rancher. "We use it as a marketing tool. ... It's like any industry. We've come a long way. You have to change with the times."

Changing with the times hasn't been as easy in the United States.

Perhaps that's because, unlike Australia, the United States exports only about 10 percent of its beef. As a result, there's less pressure to satisfy a world market.

But when that international trade is disrupted -- such as in 2003 when that cow with BSE was detected in Mabton -- the results can still be disastrous.

After the outbreak, American beef was banned for 18 months by Japan. That country was the world's largest foreign buyer of U.S. meat and had imported more than $1 billion worth annually.

A similar ban by South Korea cost the U.S. industry an estimated $1.6 billion over two years.

To this day, Japan, Korea and a number of other Asian nations require beef importers to meet standards that are stricter and more expensive than standard international guidelines.

In the wake of the mad cow scare, the USDA announced in 2004 the framework for a national tracking process known as the National Animal Identification System, or NAIS.

The USDA's long-term goal is to track the source of diseased livestock within 48 hours to stop its spread and remove any cattle suspected of carrying disease.

So far, it's spent about $147 million developing the program.

But its efforts have been slowed by resistance from the industry, which voices many of the same concerns raised by Australian producers when that nation was developing a program in the 1990s.

As a result, beef producers here aren't required to participate in NAIS. Only about 37 percent of the nation's livestock producers take part on a voluntary basis.

The USDA says that without mandatory participation, the program won't be effective.

Jack Field, executive director of the Washington Cattlemen's Association in Ellensburg, concedes a side benefit of a tracking system could be greater access to the world market.

Still, he said those who want to export around the globe -- and get the resulting premium prices for their beef -- are already doing so.

"The industry has been able to recapture current export markets with the voluntary system," he said. "The free market drove that process."

Similar objections are raised by Bullard of R-CALF, who said the United States has already done a great job of preventing and controlling diseases in the livestock industry.

He thinks the proposed system is more about promoting global commerce than disease control.

"We believe this is an attempt by the USDA and meat packers to comply with international standards for international commerce," he said. "It's misrepresented as a disease program."

But Jay Gordon, executive director of the Washington State Dairy Federation in Elma, said that argument is a red herring.

"This is primarily about disease," he said.

"If we can't trace where foot and mouth disease is, what's left after the pile gets through burning we won't be able to sell," he said, referring to how England burned vast numbers of cattle carcasses that were feared diseased in the 1990s.

"This debate is getting old," he said. "We're risking so much by being unprepared."

Dan DeRuyter, a partner in George DeRuyter & Sons Dairy -- a 4,000-head operation in Outlook -- has been preparing to participate in NAIS for several years. He already uses electronic tags to record everything from a cow's family tree to its milk production.

Most dairy producers already use that kind of identification program to manage their herds. But DeRuyter said the next step is to integrate some of his data with the national system. He supports the USDA and its efforts to implement a universal program.

"Anything that would reassure the consumer we have a quality product is good for us," said DeRuyter, whose family has been in the dairy business for about 40 years.

Others are more skeptical.

The USDA conducted 14 listening sessions nationwide to take comments on the program, including one that attracted about 75 Western livestock producers in Pasco in May. Like Australia, concerns about cost were voiced.

If 90 percent of the beef and dairy industries participated in NAIS, the USDA estimates the annual cost at $176 million. That breaks down to $4.91 per animal. Buying and applying the tags makes up three-fourths of the expense.

The USDA estimates the cost for consumers would be less than one-half of 1 percent.

There's also concern by some cattlemen that confidential information would leak from a federal database. Such information could include a producer's herd size, which could aid competitors.

"There's fear of the unknown and who will control the database," Field said.

A few ranchers even worry that animal-rights groups could somehow gain access to the information to use against them or that their cattle will be tracked by satellite.

Field dismisses such claims as unrealistic, but believes the USDA's proposal has flaws.

"The current federal approach -- one size fits all -- is poorly executed," he said.

If a database is created, many Washington cattle producers want it controlled by the industry, like Australia's privately operated system.

An ideal program, according to many ranchers, would be privately operated systems for each state that have uniform standards for data retrieval. They believe such state-based databases would be more accurate.

"A huge (national) database would never be up-to-date," said Leonard Eldridge, Washington state veterinarian with the state Department of Agriculture in Olympia.

"We know our state. We don't know other states," he said. "When there's a need for animal tracking, disease tracking, we'll share with the USDA and other state officials."

Neil Hammerschmidt, NAIS program coordinator in Washington, D.C., said all options are being considered, but the concern is having a program that can be shared universally at the local, state and federal level.

Field and Eldridge hope to overcome these obstacles, and are discussing ways to develop such a system. They contend the federal government can set up the program's parameters, and each state can manage and control it. The states' veterinarians would work with other veterinarians and issue tags.

To Field, a state-run program is an acceptable compromise between a national system and no system.

"Now it appears the USDA isn't willing or ready to consider changing its direction," he said. "It can be frustrating to see the USDA political machine move."

* Erin Snelgrove can be reached at 509-577-7684 or esnelgrove@yakimaherald.com.

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