Officials still looking to USDA for funding for new NAIS version

By MITCH LIES

Capital Press

Western state veterinarians this week characterized the USDA's plan to downsize and redesign its National Animal Identification System as a return to its original intent.

The USDA earlier this month announced it was dropping the National Animal Identification System in favor of a newly proposed Animal Disease Traceability Framework.

The change scaled back the system, shifting its emphasis from a comprehensive inventory of the nation's livestock herd to tracking livestock movement across state lines.

It also shifted much of the responsibility for developing and implementing the system from the federal government to states.

State officials now are looking to the USDA for funding to help implement the new program.

"(The USDA) said they don't expect us to do this by ourselves," Washington State Veterinarian Leonard Eldridge said. "We're waiting to see exactly what that means."

USDA officials estimate the framework's cost at well below the $228 million per year it previously projected for NAIS.

"NAIS got pulled out with people trying to make it something more than it was -- trying to sell it or put their piece to it," Oregon State Veterinarian Don Hansen said.

Among the over-reaching goals that led to the demise of NAIS, Hansen said, was a 48-hour trace-back capability to any location in the U.S.

"It was a great goal," he said. "And as a state veterinarian, I would love it. But we never resolved how to pay for it."

The system started to collapse, Hansen said, when less than two years after bringing it forward, the USDA changed participation from mandatory to voluntary.

"You could just feel all the impetus just went right out of the program," Hansen said.

Nationally, 36 percent of producers participated in NAIS, according to the USDA. In Oregon, that number was between 10 and 12 percent, Hansen said.

"It didn't work, and it didn't look like it was going to," Hansen said.

Western state veterinarians said they will meet with cattlemen from their respective states in the coming months to develop their traceability systems. They also plan to meet with fellow state veterinarians to ensure the systems are compatible.

Idaho State Veterinarian Bill Barton characterized the new system as being implemented from the bottom up. The old system, he said, was being implemented from the top down.

While specifics of the new system have yet to be worked out, state and tribal veterinarians have been told they will need to meet minimum identification requirements.

Branding programs, disease vaccination programs and other programs already in place will be utilized to develop traceability frameworks, state veterinarians said.

"I have lots of information about locations and animal movement through our markets," Hansen said.

"For the last 50 to 60 years we've been identifying animal movements," Eldridge said. "We just need to build on those systems."

The veterinarians said their major concerns are to develop standards that are workable for livestock producers but adequate to ensure traceability.

"If they trace an animal that was diseased into my state and they can only trace it to the border ... then that might jeopardize the status of the state," Hansen said.

"So I have to look at that as a real risk. We have to figure out how to be better than that," he said.

"The primary thing we're after is protecting our state's livestock," Eldridge said. "We want to know where it came from and where it might have gone."

State veterinarians said USDA officials have not provided timelines for implementing the minimum standards.

Efforts to contact California's state veterinarian were unsuccessful.