06/03/05 Animal I.D. attitude change?

The whole point of the symposium was to talk about animal identification. MUNNS And I expect within two years we'll have most of the cattle id. As soon as the word gets out and they bring a premium in the marketplace I believe it will be more market driven then mandated by the government." When cattle producers like Tim Munns of Utah were asked if a mandatory animal id was feasible by 2009 they said yes, but added that it will probably happen before that. STOTT "Japanese age verification, country of origin labeling, those kind of issues people are recognizing that this will serve as the foundation for a lot of those other market driven initiatives." That's Rick Stott, chairman of the Northwest Pilot Project, a group dedicated to developing a workable animal identification system in the West. There are three areas of concern today that they're trying to resolve. STOTT "The issue of group lot management. In other words in the West and many places in the country we don't sell individual animals. Commerce doesn't move individual animals, commerce moves groups of animals and cattlemen sell groups of animals and feedlots pay for groups of animals. So in the scheme of having the system mirror what commerce is doing. That's a big issue and that's a big concern we're addressing in the Northwest Pilot program." The second is confidentiality and both state and federal laws come into play there. Stott says some of those problems can be overcome by new laws and by putting the data base into the hands of a privately held, non-profit entity. STOTT "The third area is just the infrastructure that doesn't exist today. What we're finding in the Northwest Pilot Program is that the second layer, the second purchaser, the auction yard, the feedlot, those folks have no infrastructure to read thousands of animals a day as they receive those animals. Panel readers, all the technology exists but is not in those places of business. And so having that infrastructure built is critically important which comes back to how is that going to be built? Is it going to be funded by the government? Unlikely. The government is not going to pay for all of that infrastructure. So how do we do it? Through the market driven forces." Big hurdles to clear but people in seven western states who are determined to make it work. Line on Agriculture Bill Scott