USDA drops requirement to track age of animal

Published 18 April 2006

Age has played a key role in mad cow disease investigations, but a livestock tracking system planned by the government will not include the age of animals. The U.S. Agriculture Department (USDA) officials say they do not want to overburden ranchers and that they can track most birth dates by other means. Critics charge the omission could make the system worthless. “So what’s the point of having this animal ID system? This is one fact you actually really need to know when it comes to mad cow,” Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union, said yesterday.

The USDA promised to create the tracking system after the nation’s first case of mad cow disease two years ago. The department has already spent $84 million on it. Earlier this month, Secretary of Agriculture Mike Johanns promised it would be in place by 2009. The system also applies to pigs and chickens and to many other diseases, but the major controversy is about mad cow disease, medically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE. “When you’re dealing with contagious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease or exotic Newcastle, age really isn’t all that important,” department spokeswoman Dore Mobley said. “It’s important when you’re talking about BSE, to estimate when an animal may have become infected.”

The purpose of the tracking system is to allow authorities, within forty-eight hours after a disease is discovered, to pinpoint a single animal’s movements. Industry groups are collecting and keeping the data, which the government intends to tap when there is an outbreak.