A controversial federal plan to track livestock from birth to butcher shop needs more input from the people it intends to regulate, new U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said earlier this week.

Vilsack made the announcement after hearing from several farm and ranch groups, including representatives from Montana, about the National Animal Identification System. Western farm and ranch groups of all political stripes have called the government's plans overreaching and unworkable.

"All of the groups that represent the cattle-raising West are pretty unanimous in our take on it," said Gilles Stockton, of the Western Organization of Resource Councils. "We're pretty skeptical."

1st meeting

The rancher from Grass Range said Vilsack's sit-down meeting with livestock groups big and small was a first, despite the USDA having spent years planning to track farm animals from farm to supermarket.

National identification system advocates say the tracking is needed so the government can easily locate sources of disease in the nation's food supply and identify animals that have been potentially exposed. Most vocal among the groups is the American Veterinary Medical Association, which contends that extensive identification not only protects consumers but is also necessary to minimize the livestock loss.

Currently, the identification system is voluntary. But, if nationally enforced it would require everyone from large operators to urbanites with egg laying hens to tag their animals, probably with microchips or radio tags, and regularly report the animals' status to the government.

Ranchers would have to document the movements of range animals like cattle or sheep being moved from spring to summer pasture. Newborns would have to be tagged and reported within a day. An animal dead from illness or predator attack would have to be reported in 24 hours.

Voluntary participation

Producers involved in relatively contained and tightly controlled operations like dairies, poultry operations or hog farms haven't objected much to national animal identification, partly because the necessary scanning and monitoring is relatively easy in a controlled situation. Voluntary participation by producers in those groups is at or near the federal goal of 70 percent.

Western livestock groups are the biggest holdouts. Ranchers argue that open pasture and grazing leases on broad swaths of government land make it nearly impossible to track livestock and determine their interaction with animals from other herds. Ranchers like Stockton say recent problems with American food safety have stemmed from how the animals were handled at the slaughterhouse, not how they were treated in pasture.

"The USDA has failed to explain and justify why a radically new system is needed when the preexisting systems have been highly effective in controlling disease," said Bill Bullard of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America. "We have become the envy of the world in controlling disease."

Bullard, who attended the Washington, D.C., meeting for R-CALF USA, said Vilsack brought the various groups in because voluntary participation in the National Animal Identification System wasn't strong. The USDA had hoped the majority of American farms and ranches would register their operations with the federal government as a first step, but participation was less than half. The meeting ended with Vilsack promising a countrywide listening tour to gather more input from farmers and ranchers.

"He indicated that this was a beginning of a dialogue with the industry and that he was concerned of the potential for Congress to shut off funding for this program," Bullard said.

Some states, Arizona, Kentucky, Missouri, Nebraska and Utah, have passed laws barring their state livestock agencies from carrying out a mandatory federal program. A bill to keep the animal identification voluntary in Montana died in the Legislature this year. Indiana, Michigan and Wisconsin, have all mandated programs to dovetail with federal identification plans.

The Montana Stockgrowers Association would like animal identification to remain voluntary, said Errol Rice, the group's chief executive. If the market wants an identification system, and one is already evolving to meet the beef demands of foreign buyers in countries such as Japan and South Korea, then a system will be created, Rice said.

The Stockgrowers also want to preserve hot-iron branding, the West's original identification system, because it makes sorting mingled herds easier. Radio tags all look alike.