By Rob Moritz
Arkansas News Bureau
LITTLE ROCK — During Jon Fitch’s first term in the state Senate in 1985 he sponsored legislation that established the state’s brucellosis program in an attempt to eradicate the disease from cattle herds in Arkansas.
Twenty-five years later, as director of the state Livestock and Poultry Commission, Fitch is pushing the program nationally as a model for keeping tabs on cattle.
“It’s an inexpensive program that works,” Fitch said last week, adding that he has offered the program to U.S. Agriculture Secretary Tim Vilsack as an alternative to the recently scrapped National Animal Identification System.
About 29,000 cattle farmers in Arkansas manage about 1.9 million cows, according to Travis Justice, senior economist with the Arkansas Farm Bureau. The state’s cattle industry generates about $500 million in sales annually, he said.
Earlier this year, the federal Agriculture Department announced it was dropping the NAIS program in response to negative feedback gathered during a national listening tour in 2009.
The idea behind NAIS, Fitch said, was for the USDA to be able to trace diseased or infected cattle back to their original herds in a short time.
Fitch said 90 percent of those who attended meetings across the country opposed the NAIS program for a variety of reasons, including, among other things, the cost — $3 per cow, because the federal government would know exactly how many cows each farmer has and because the program would have been mandatory.
Now, he said, the USDA wants to provide a more flexible program for tracing cattle that would be administered and operated by the states.
Fitch told legislators attending a joint meeting of the House and Senate agriculture committees last week that he has informed the USDA of Arkansas’ self-funded brucellosis program, and its cattle identification system in particular, and urged the agency to consider it on a nationwide basis.
“To me, what we have is a very inexpensive surveillance as well as a preventative program, and so I think it’s a good program to continue.” he said.
Brucellosis is a highly contagious cattle disease that causes weight loss and miscarriage of calves. The state has been brucellosis free since 1988, Fitch said.
Until about two years ago, the federal government offered states grants for their brucellosis programs. When the USDA announced that the U.S. was brucellosis free, the funding stopped, Fitch said.
Currently, Arkansas is one of a few states that has its own, self-funded program.
Under the state’s program, adult cattle ready for auction are tagged when they have receive the brucellosis vaccination. At auction, they are tagged again when sold. Those that arrive at auction without a tag are tagged and then tagged again when sold.
The information on the tags is then stored in a federally maintained database, which can be used to trace the ownership of the cow if a disease outbreak occurs.
“If there animals are slaughtered and there is a problem, it can be traced back to whoever sold them very quickly,” Fitch said.
The state brucellosis program is funded by the cattle owners at $1 per cow. About $680,000 was generated for the program during the last fiscal year, covering the cost of vaccinations and inspectors who tag the cattle at auction, Fitch said.
“I don’t think there is a cattle farmer in Arkansas that minds paying that dollar,” said Rep. Roy Ragland, R-Marshall, chairman of the House Agriculture Committee and a cattle farmer.
Ragland said he was glad the USDA decided not to move forward with the NAIS program because it would have required the tagging of all cattle, not just adult cows ready for slaughter.
“Once you sell a calf at a sale barn you lose the care, custody and control of that calf,” he said. “You don’t know what (the new owner) may feed it or what animals it may be mixed with, so for them to come back to me six months later and say, ‘Hey, we’ve got so many tons of contaminated meat and we think that came from your calf,’ why, I haven’t had any thing to do that.”
Fitch said he plans to attend a meeting in late August in Denver where possible alternatives to the NAIS program are to be discussed.
He said he plans to lobby for Arkansas’ brucellosis program.
“I’ll promote the state’s plan but also want to watch and make sure nothing is done that hurts the state’s current program,” Fitch said.
July 19th, 2010 at 10:56 am
***KEEPING THEM HONEST***
Arkansas producers have contended all along that Arkansas and other states already have a traceability and disease prevention system that has stood the test of time. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that has evolved since 2002 was not only costly and unachievable but was intended “for other purposes” which would lead to market control by the meatpackers.
While Director Fitch has stated that NAIS would be done strictly on a voluntary basis in Arkansas, Arkansas producers were weary because Arkansas had entered into a contract Cooperative Agreement with USDA that stated otherwise. Therefore, Arkansas animal producers presented legislation that defined “Voluntary NAIS” as with the consent of the owner, in which the State, Cattlemen’s Association and Farm Bureau came out against and the legislation failed. When asked about their support of “voluntary” the parties stated that voluntary was in line with their policy but they did not want to be locked into a voluntary system.
Arkansas producers are very pleased that NAIS was scrapped at the federal level but it was replaced with Animal Disease Traceability Plan (ADTP) that allows for a bookend approach that could lead us right back to NAIS. Moreover, April 2010, Arkansas entered into an ADTP cooperative agreement with basically the same language as NAIS with required components of NAIS into voluntary marketing programs that are not even required by the USDA. Whereas, the Angus Association has a certified marketing program, the requirements are set by the association and not by the State.
Director Fitch stated at the meeting that the commission had worked out an Arkansas ADT plan with Adam McClung, ACA Ex VP, and Dr. Tom Troxel, U of A. I feel like Arkansas would have been better served if all entities had been brought to the table. I also asked Director Fitch for transparency purposes to post all information on the Arkansas Livestock and Poultry Commission website.
Cattle producers need to remind their organization that we are in the cattle business and not the beef meatpacking industry and the State does not need to mandate marketing requirements. Please, remember, for every cow that is exported 2.5 must be imported for U.S. consumption. The traceability plan absolutely has nothing to do with food safety nor will it prevent disease. In fact, it lowers safety standards for the purpose of international trade and invites disease into this country. Therefore, it is important that the State gets it right, if not handled correctly it will control the market and put Arkansas farmers out of business.