Concerns Over NAIS
Concerns Over NAIS. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.
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.
DEHAVEN: As I understand it they will let each state and tribal nation more or less develop their own program. So I’m concerned about inter-operability between 50 or more different systems. Will one state be able to talk to another state as an animal moves through interstate commerce.
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.
DEHAVEN: My estimation, we’ve allowed those political issues to get in the way of what is a much more important issue and that is our ability to rapidly trace animals to contain and eliminate a disease outbreak. It’s not a partisan issue but I think both administrations have been caving to this public resistance which in my estimation while it may be important it pales in comparison to the economic impact of a major disease outbreak.
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
KNIGHT: Our efforts on identification were an integral part of getting the U.S. declared to be of controlled risk which has opened the markets for us and made it so that we could get back in to Korea, Japan and why we’re able pull down any of the barriers between Mexico and Canada and being able to reopen many of those markets. The next level, the one that’s most desirable is to be called “negligible risk.” My understanding is you have to be able to do full traceability. You have to have a national animal ID system to achieve negligible risk. I think this puts it in extreme jeopardy.
That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.
