In January 2023, the USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) proposed a rule that would require that animal traceability regulations require “official” animal ear tags to be both visually and electronically readable. This rule is part of HR 4366, which is the Consolidated Appropriations Act 2024, which contains many items. Please click here for the Senate Appropriations Committee Summary for Agriculture.
Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) has joined with ranchers and other organizations in opposing this requirement, particularly as is it applies to smaller independent producers. The proposed rule has now been sent to the Federal Office of Budget Management for consideration before publishing a final rule. Please see our latest Action Alert to take action now.
Mandatory electronic identification, or radio-frequency identification (RFID) has been discussed for well over a decade at the USDA-APHIS and appears to be likely in the near future to become USDA policy unless we can succeed at explaining the burden on smaller independent producers.
Background
For decades, multinational meatpacking corporations and high-tech companies have pushed mandatory electronic identification for livestock, to promote international trade and maximize the meatpacking companies’ profits. In 2010, the initial proposal for electronic ID was defeated by massive opposition from organic farmers, conventional ranchers, sale-barn owners, homesteaders, and consumers who want to buy from American producers.
The 2013 Animal Disease Traceability (ADT) rule requires that all dairy cattle and adult beef cattle that cross state lines have some form of “official identification.” The rule specifically provides that people can use either electronic or traditional forms of ID. In 2020, the USDA APHIS issued a mandate that cattle and bison be tagged with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) tags. Following litigation, in March 2021 this mandate was revoked.
In January 2023, USDA-APHIS published a proposed rule to mandate electronic ID for cattle and bison, which is now pending before the United States Office of Budget and Management. Despite the fact that the vast majority of comments the agency received were opposed to the proposal, USDA appears to be planning to finalize it in 2024.
The USDA’s new proposed rule would make electronic ID the only form of official ID allowed for cattle crossing state lines under the ADT rule. The proposed rule will not improve traceability and will disproportionately harm small ranchers and farmers.
Problems with the Rule
1. The Proposed Rule Disproportionately Harms Small Ranchers and Farmers: Moving to a completely electronic ID system carries significant costs, including the cost of the tag itself but also needed infrastructure costs. Large corporate-controlled operations will not only benefit from economies of scale but could structure their operations to avoid individual ID requirements altogether.
Under the ADT rule, animals that would normally be required to have an ear tag or other individual form of official identification can instead be identified by group numbers if they are managed together as a group from birth to death. (See 9 C.F.R. section 86.1 Group/Lot identification number (GIN) and its not necessary to have the GIN attached to each animal.) In other words, vertically integrated operations, in which an entity owns the animal through its entire lifetime, can save large sums of money as compared to independent producers (even mid-size and large independent producers).
With the higher costs of EID compared to the traditional forms of identification, this will create incentives for vertical integration and consolidation in the cattle industry. Vertical integration and consolidation are already a problem in the cattle industry. Moreover, costs of the program will disproportionately be borne by independent producers. A 2006 Kansas State University report found that costs of an RFID-based system are significantly higher for people with smaller herds due to the expense of the electronic infrastructure. USDA’s 2009 analysis affirmed this by finding that significantly greater costs would be imposed on small producers. Specifically, the agency found that large operations would pay $2.48/head as compared to $7.17/head for what the agency termed the “smallest operations.”
2. The Proposed Rule Will not Improve Traceability: USDA-APHIS and multinational corporations claim that the rule will improve disease traceability. Yet the USDA-APHIS previously estimated that the new rule will impact approximately 11 million cattle per year, or only 11% of the cattle in the country. This is in part due to the allowance for group identification described above. In a 2010 Congressional Research Service Report, the CRS noted that 18% participation by cattle producers in the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) was too low to be effective, and to respond effectively to animal disease outbreak.
In addition, the proposed rule will be ineffective because of the probable error rate in implementing the program. The proposed rule provides that the EID tags will include visual ID numbers so that they can be read either electronically or visually. Yet error rates that exists with current nine-digit tags will surely increase with the proposed 14-digit codes.
Moreover, traceability from independent ranches and farmers has not been found to be a problem. When consumers purchase from their local ranches or farms, they know where the meat is produced and can easily trace any illness back to that producer if necessary (which the USDA has not established is in fact necessary).
Conclusion
FTCLDF continues to oppose the new proposed USDA APHIS rule. It is working in collaboration with ranchers, farmers and non-profit organizations to defeat this rule. FTCLDF will continue to monitor developments and report any rules changes.