The Obama administration wants to create a federally mandated system of tracking the nation’s meat supply, but producers say such a requirement would swell food costs and cut profits.
It’s an important debate, but we question its timing.
The middle of a recession seems a poor time to implement a system that could raise food prices for shoppers and cuts profits and salaries for American ranchers and their employees.
Presently, cattle ranchers, sheepherders and hog farmers voluntarily tag their animals and keep track of the animals’ immunizations through a unique identification number. The ID number is recorded at the feedlots, slaughterhouses and within the batch numbers of the boxes of steaks, shanks and slabs of bacon sent to market.
The voluntary system has its faults. Some growers don’t tag all their animals. And the mostly paper-based recordkeeping greatly slows researchers trying to trace a disease outbreak to its source.
Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack says the mandatory National Animal Identification System would require all animals — even most chickens — to be tagged, and it would replace the paper records with a computerized database.
If implemented, Vilsack argues, finding the source of the next outbreak of such things as mad cow disease, bovine tuberculosis and hoof and mouth disease would be reduced from weeks to a day or two.
Besides wishing to protect public health, Vilsack argues that such a system would be an added selling point to foreign countries like Japan, which aren’t buying U.S. meat due to concerns about the integrity of the supply.
We agree, and think market-savvy ranchers ought to start implementing computer tracking on their own.
Growers say the cost of the registration and tracking gear would add $10 to $20 to each head of cattle, according to The Post’s Michael Booth. That’s huge compared to the $40 to $50 per-cow profit margin growers hope to reap.
But proponents say it would be much cheaper and, in fact, the technology solution remains an evolving discussion.
The Colorado Cattlemen’s Association has no argument with increased tracking, but balks at a government mandate. Its executives insist that market forces and the desire to woo the Japans of the world already create incentives for producers to improve the tracking process voluntarily.
Meanwhile, it would seem that the most critical focus, in order to prevent disease, ought to be on smart feeding practices, regular inspections and other straightforward prevention measures.
The question of whether to mandate tracking is further complicated by the fact the latest food scares have been in produce, not meat. Is the government going to require the tagging of every potato and frond of asparagus?
We ask Vilsack to wait for better economic times to consider the new regulation, and ask growers to improve their voluntary system enough to negate the need of another regulation.
