We were listening to NPR this morning and heard a news clip about a proposed central livestock identification registry here in Wisconsin. It is supposed to be set up like the one they've instituted in Europe after the recent hoof & mouth outbreak and the mandatory(?) one already in place in Canada. Any information on how these currently work would be appreciated. The news clip said that there are supposed to be community meetings to gather input from Wisconsin livestock farmers. I'm interested to know if anyone else has heard about this and what your thoughts are? There seem to be several issues involved, such as: accuracy of records, state-level responsibility, cost and who pays for it, responsibility of farmers for their herds and any legal implications related to defective product, not to mention privacy issues associated with such a registry, and numerous others..... Just thought it would be a good discussion topic for this forum. Currently, we have sheep and chickens and not sure that we're willing to comply.

-- Rose Marie Wild (wintersongfarm@yahoo.com), September 05, 2001

Answers

The USDA already has rules in place to register herds that are in "feedlots". We have gotten notices from the FSA office encouraging us to register "to protect us in the future". Hogwash...

We haven't complied and will not. Some of the rules state that if you have animals in a lot for more than 45 days a year you are considered a feedlot. Now around here many farmers bring their animals up into smaller lots (larger than the average feedlot) for the winter which is more than 45 days in this part of the country.

-- beckie (sunshine_horses@yahoo.com), September 05, 2001.

Unless your animals will never leave home, you never sell to anyone else who is either in the livestock ID program or the Scrapie program, show, auction, sell to slaughter houses, export, sell across state lines, etc. then this will not effect you. Get ahold of your local state Animal Health Commission for the rulings. APHIS is online. Here in Texas we are already hearing about the Scrapie ID program, we are lucky in that they have to accept the tattoo's of our goats already registered with ADGA as our Scrapie tattoo also. I am very much the opposite in my feeling, this is one big brother tactic that will help in the long run, it will help clean up many of the diseases that have been left for breeders to clean up, which they haven't, and will drastically help export. And like it or not, it will also widen the gap of the amount of profit to be had for sales of stock, for folks in these programs, compared to the amounts sold by folks who will not comply. To export sheep you have to show that they come from a scrapie controlled area, something that without these programs has shut down export. Vicki

-- Vicki McGaugh TX (vickilonesomedoe@hotmail.com), September 05, 2001.