Thoughts from the Middle of Nowhere

Some more interesting information on the "wonder tags," the RFID tags that the Government wants us to use on our cattle for the National Animal Identification System.

BeefTalk: Electronic identification - Two steps ahead, one back

Attempts to implement a national identification program for animal trace-back have been noticed. News about the outbreak of a disease with notable impact has increased the pro and con discussion, but the lasting outcome is far from defined.

The Dickinson Research Extension Center is involved in a project that is designed to monitor cattle in transit and locate cattle during shipment. This research involves evaluating the ability to read calves going on and off a truck using low-frequency RFID (radio frequency identification) tags.

So, what did their research show?

For the optimist, the trial was 94.4 percent successful. For the practical cattle producer, only four of the six runs actually resulted in a 94.4 percent or higher success rate. In reality, only 66.7 percent of the runs actually achieved a realistic outcome, while 33.3 percent failed. One tag failed twice, requiring three reads to achieve a 100 percent read for this set of data.

ONLY 66.7% ACHIEVED A REALISTIC OUTCOME. That's horrible. The Government wants us to rely on a technology that is only effective 2/3 of the time. Sorry Charlie, that's just not going to work. How much more work and labor is this system going to entail with these kind of numbers? I don't even want to think about it. Running the cattle and reading the tags time and time again because the system doesn't work right. You start running over 500 cows with these kinds of numbers and the chances of getting a good read on them are slim to none.

This whole NAIS system needs to be scaled back a whole lot. A herd ID system with permanent metal tags would be the easiest, low tech solution that could be made to work for all. I still wouldn't like it particularly, but it would work.

Failure is simply a few errors in judgment, repeated every day. Jim Rohn

Cross-Posted to No Mandatory Animal ID.

Rancher has stake in organic beef

Cattle rancher Rod Morrison doesn't want to just sell you a steak.

Rather, he wants to sell you a choice cut of organic beef, letting you pick which ranch in the Bighorn Basin it came from. And he wants to let you make the purchase without leaving home, using the Internet.

Morrison is working on a plan to set up a U.S. Department of Agriculture processing facility in Powell that would specialize in marketing organic and natural beef.

This is interesting but I am not real sure it's for me. Why you may ask? The organic label on beef is pretty scary to me. The way I understand it if a animal gets sick, there is not much you can do for it. The only thing you can doctor it with is Natural items which are not as effective as something as simple as penicillin. Take this spring so far. I haven't had a large scour problem on the calves but I've doctored 15-20 calves for the problem. Under organic standards what I've done, use penicillin, would not be allowed.

How many of those 20 I would have lost without appropriate medication? I'm not sure but I would bet half of them would be dead now. Also the disease would have spread further through the calves infecting more than i have doctored causing more sick critters. That really cuts into profit margins when you lose critters that could be saved.

Overall my herd health is excellent so it would not be a big problem but if I quit doctoring sick critters the herd health would go down no matter how hard I try. No different than comparing the health of humans in a city like Denver with the health of humans living in a poor African city. The lack of health care in Africa means that diseases and medical problems are rampant and overall the people are not as healthy as those that have access to proper health care like most in the US do. It would be no different for my cattle herd. Lack of access to health care would cause overall herd health to go down.

I care for my animals too much to subject them to such poor health conditions the organic label could cause. I don't care if Wal-mart is getting in the organic business. Love and care for my animals would make this a tough decision to swallow. I've thought about it before and nothing here has changed my mind.

It's a bunch of bull. How do you know what's really organic? Today, there's all these impurities in the water and the air. The water for the fruits and vegetables has junk in it. Jack LaLanne