USDA not providing enough tags for new program | TSLN.com

News News | Nov 1, 2024

The U.S. Department of Agriculture Animal Disease Traceability update goes into effect Nov. 5, 2024 and will require some cattle and bison to be officially identified with electronic identification tags.

In its April announcement of the rule requiring the use of electronic tags, USDA said, “USDA will continue to provide tags to producers free of charge to jumpstart efforts to enable the fastest possible response to a foreign animal disease.”

However, the North Dakota State Veterinarian reports that his state and other states in his region were not allocated nearly enough tags from USDA to cover their needs for cattle moving interstate and cattle that will be bangs vaccinated.

Dr. Ethan Andress said that USDA allocated tags to each state based on what they deemed the need for interstate movement of cattle in that state.

“North Dakota traditionally needs about 125,000 silver tags for interstate movement of cattle and about 150,000 to 175,000 tags for brucellosis,” said the North Dakota state veterinarian. He said USDA allocated his state 116,000 electronic (RFID) tags.

The USDA rules require that an electronic tag/ radio frequency identification will now replace the traditional orange metal “clip” tag applied to heifers when they are bangs vaccinated.

The USDA rules also require that an RFID tag will replace the silver metal clip tag used to identify sexually intact cattle or bison that moved across state lines historically.

Andress said it is his understanding that South Dakota, Minnesota, Montana have already used up their 2024 tag allocation

Andress said his office has provided tags for veterinarians along the border of some of these states because he has been “stingy” ensuring that no veterinarian has an unnecessarily large stockpile of tags.

Congress allocated USDA $15 million for the program. In its regulatory impact analysis for the 2024 final rule, APHIS estimates that the total average cost to the industry of purchasing EID eartags would range from approximately $28.9 million to $34 million. “Producers may also need to construct pens, chutes, or head catch gates to accurately capture EID information from individual animals,” said USDA.

“USDA used the $15 million from Congress and bought 8 million tags,” explained Dr. Andress. He said these tags were allocated to states on a percent basis of how many cows exist in each state. USDA was attempting to fulfill or nearly fulfill the need for identification of breeding stock that moves interstate, but did not consider or provide the required tags for bangs vaccinations, said Andress.

While bangs vaccination is a voluntary protocol, Andress points out, veterinarians are required by USDA to apply an official identification tag (now an RFID tag) upon completion of the bangs vaccination.

Andress said that that for years the official bangs tag has been an orange metal clip tag and identification for breeding animals moving interstate has been a silver metal clip tag.

He encourages veterinarians to now use orange RFID tags for bangs vaccinated heifers, although USDA doesn’t require a certain color in that instance. USDA has made both orange and white RFID tags available to states, and state veterinarians can request either color or both, within their tag allocation.

Andress said that most states in the United States are considered brucellosis free, but because the elk and bison in Yellowstone are known brucellosis carriers, producers in states geographically close to those wildlife herds are most likely to continue to bangs vaccinate .

“Wyoming and Idaho have mandatory brucellosis vaccination programs. Montana has mandatory vaccination in a designated surveillance area,” he said. “In North Dakota, it isn’t mandatory to vaccinate for brucellosis but if you do vaccinate, you are required to have an official tag, which at this time is recognized as an official identification,” he said.

USDA’s fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2024.

Andress said his office has been informed that more tags will be made available for each state at the beginning of 2025. If North Dakota’s allocation is once again 116,000 tags, he plans to request only white tags, and hopes that more funding becomes available before the 2025 bangs vaccination season begins, so that he can hopefully obtain more orange tags.

Producers typically bangs vaccinate heifers between the ages of 4 and 12 months according to APHIS. In this region, many producers do so after weaning heifers or buying weaned heifers, before the heifers turn a year of age.

Andress points out that the bangs vaccination tag can be seen as a value added effort. “We don’t have the disease in North Dakota, but the tag creates a premium for the seller because in the cattle industry, potential buyers think, that animal was worth enough for the owner to spend the money to get it vaccinated, and it indicates that a veterinarian was involved in the herd, so it shows that a producer and a vet worked together to determine that animal is valuable,” he said

Senator Cramer (R-ND) in a news release last week criticized USDA for not providing bangs tags to producers, saying it creates about a $500,000 shortfall.

Cramer a letter to USDA requesting answers on the funding shortfall and stressed the need to allocate resources to ranchers for EID compliance.

When TSLN asked USDA if all veterinarians have access to the number of RFID tags they need, USDA responded, “Some states have received their entire allocation of tags for distribution and other states are getting orders filled each week.”

When asked if USDA has provided readers or wands to facilitate reading tags, USDA said, “USDA does not directly provide wands or readers, but has provided funding to States to use for this purpose. The amount of funding and the use can vary by each state.”

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