Veterinarians and a Bush-era USDA official are expressing reservations about USDA’s decision to dump the National Animal Identification System.
CEO Ron DeHaven says the American Veterinary Medical Association cannot endorse Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack’s new approach to animal disease traceability because there are simply too many unanswered questions.
One main question, DeHaven says, is whether or not state and tribal plans will work with one another.
According to DeHaven, who was USDA’s Chief Veterinarian when the first U.S. BSE case was discovered in 2003, politics trumped animal disease control.
He says we've let those political issues get in the way.
Bruce Knight, USDA’s Marketing and Regulatory Under Secretary in the final years of the Bush Administration, fears that abandoning the NAIS model will undercut U.S. efforts to obtain a negligible BSE risk rating from the World Organization for Animal Health.
Knight explains that this is important for a number of trade partners.
USDA estimates the new animal disease traceability framework will take 18 months to two years to create and implement. But Jay Truitt of Policy Solutions - a Washington-based lobbying firm - says it’ll take a lot longer than that - making it more difficult to lift remaining BSE-related restrictions on U.S. beef exports.
Truitt expects this to be a four to five year rulemaking process.
Truitt - formerly Vice President of Government Affairs at the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association - wasn’t surprised by Vilsack’s decision to scrap NAIS. He described beef cattle producer participation in the program as "pitfiful."
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Posted by Haylie Shipp