RFID Ear Tag Lawsuit

USDA’s recent mandate of using radio frequency identification tags and some classes of cattle and bison has been a hot-button issue for a while. While the rule is now in effect, there is a pending lawsuit. R-CALF, United Stock Growers of America, CEO Bill Bullard.

“We filed the lawsuit. The lawsuit to relatively slow, so the day before the November 5 effective date, we also wrote, and this is through the new civil liberties Alliance that's representing us in this lawsuit, they filed a petition with the USDA asking the USDA to voluntarily suspend or postpone the effective date of this rule pending the judicial review, wait until the lawsuit is over. And there's a precedence for that in other federal agencies, that when a legitimate challenge is filed, the government would voluntarily not implement it until the court has made its decision. And in the alternative, if the government doesn't want to do this voluntarily, then we want them to construe our letter as a petition for an 80-day delay, simply to give the industry time to Europe and engineer up so that they can implement this.”

Bullard says that R-CALF will continue to push Congress to get them to overturn a rule as this issue is viewed by producers as an infringement on their privacy and liberties.