IT’S THE PITTS — WITH ALL DUE RESPECT

by: Lee Pitts

Mark Zuckerberg is the 27 year old billionaire techno-geek-god who founded Facebook. For you old-timers, Facebook is that Internet phenomenon that allows hundreds of millions of people around the world to simultaneously waste their time telling hundreds of “friends,” most of whom they’ve never met in person, every little boring detail of their lives.

It seems that every year Zuckerberg challenges himself to improve one facet of his life. A noble cause indeed. In 2010 his challenge was to learn Chinese, and the year before that it was to wear a tie every day. (Personally, I think I’d rather build the Great Wall of China by hand than wear a tie every day.) This year Zuckerberg vowed that he’d get more in touch with his food supply by only eating meat from animals that he killed himself.

Thus far Zuckerberg has killed a lobster, which, if you’ve ever been in a fancy seafood restaurant, you know entails picking out a lobster and dropping it in a big pot of boiling water. Big deal. All you have to do is cover your ears so you don’t hear the screams, and then serve. Still, Zuckerberg said he got very emotional about it.

Next, he put a picture of the chicken he killed on his Facebook page, and I’m sure the chicken now has millions of new Facebook “friends.” (Although I wouldn’t be expecting any Tweets from the dead chicken if I were you.)

Zuckerberg has also killed a pig and a goat but, in his words, has “basically become a vegetarian.” I don’t want Zuckerberg to get emotional or anything so I won’t tell him that the stalk of broccoli or head of lettuce he eats are also killed when they are harvested.       Next up, Zuckerberg says he’d like to try his hand at hunting and if you are in his immediate vicinity I’d stay indoors and put bright orange vests on all your cows because I’m sure Zuckerberg must really be hankering for a steak by now.

I’d be a lot more impressed if Zuckerberg only ate animals that he RAISED and then killed. Better yet, Zuckerberg ought to go back to high school and take vocational agriculture. In my freshmen year my ag instructor encouraged all of us FFA Greenhands to raise a commercial lamb. Then he showed us the proper, most sanitary, and least painful way to kill the lamb. It might not have been painful for my lamb, but it sure was for me. Talk about growing up in a hurry! This experience taught me two important and valuable lessons early in life, number one: that it’s very fulfilling to provide food for your family. And number two: if you want to eat, something has to die. It’s literally a fact of life.

If any of the FFA kids felt too remorseful, or couldn’t cope with the concept of killing, our ag teacher asked them, “Don’t you think the lamb appreciated the healthy life you gave it, the good food you fed it twice a day and the humane way you ended it’s life? Wouldn’t your lamb have made the choice to have lived that life, rather than having had no life at all, which is most certainly what would have happened if we didn’t raise animals for food?”

That’s the way 99.9 percent of ranchers feel about their cattle. They are not callous people or hardened psychotic killers like PETA wants everyone to believe. They have a job to do and they do it well. And it is a noble one: to feed people. I’ve seen these same ranchers cry when their horse died or pay whatever it costs to have the vet set their dog’s broken leg.

While I applaud Zuckerberg for wanting to get more in touch with his food supply, I’d also suggest that he need not become a vegetarian to end the suffering of animals. In fact, it’s the exact opposite. It all boils down to this Mr. Zuckerberg: If you want to give the gift of life to more animals, eat more meat. It really is that simple.

All the cattlemen I know, myself included, became ranchers in the first place because we truly love and respect animals. In fact, some of us prefer them to people. The animals are our friends, maybe not Facebook friends, but good friends nonetheless.

wwwLeePittsbooks.com

Team Obama Regulates Goat Herders’ Workplaces

by Audrey Hudson

The Obama administration is setting new workplace regulations to assist foreign workers who fill goat herding positions in the U.S. , including employee-paid cell phones and comfy beds.

These new special procedures issued by the Labor Department must be followed by employers who want to hire temporary agricultural foreign workers to perform sheep herding or goat herding activities. It describes strict rules for sleeping quarters, lighting, food storage, bathing, laundry, cooking and new rules for the counters where food is prepared.

“A separate sleeping unit shall be provided for each person, except in a family arrangement,” says the rules signed by Jane Oates, assistant secretary for employment and training administration at the Labor Department.

“Such a unit shall include a comfortable bed, cot or bunk, with a clean mattress,” the rules state.

Diane Katz, a research fellow in regulatory policy at The Heritage Foundation, unearthed the policy in the “ Federal Register,” the massive daily journal of proposed regulations that Washington bureaucrats publish every day.

Under the Obama Administration, the nanny state has imposed 75 new major regulations with annual costs of $38 billion.

“This captures what is wrong with government,” Katz said. “I could not have made this up.”

With unemployment holding steady at 9% and government regulations adding more burden to small businesses, such as those run by ranching families, Katz said, bureaucrats aren’t helping.

“Instead of remedying the problem, the regulations make it that much harder,” Katz insisted. “We may need a whole set of regulations just to define what a comfortable bed is. I imagine it’s not straw.”

The new lighting standards say that in areas where it is not feasible to provide electrical service such as tents or mobile trailers, lanterns must be provided. “Kerosene wick lights meet the definition of lantern,” the regulations say.

“When workers or their families are permitted or required to cook in their individual unit, a space shall be provided with adequate lighting and ventilation.”

“Wall surfaces next to all food preparation and cooking areas shall be of nonabsorbent, easy-to-clean material. Wall surfaces next to cooking areas shall be of fire-resistant material,” the regulations say.

“It makes you wonder,” Katz said, “how they ever did this before the government got involved?”

“Who knew we needed all of this federal help for herding goats?” Katz quipped.

R-CALF United Stockgrowers of America

“Fighting for the U.S. Cattle Producer”

For Immediate Release Contact: R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard

August 9, 2011 Phone: 406-252-2516; r-calfusa@r-calfusa.com

USDA Spurns U.S. Cattle Industry: Issues Overreaching, Intrusive Mandatory Animal Identification Rule

Billings, Mont. — In direct defiance of fundamental recommendations to preserve branding as a means of official animal identification and to not include cattle less than 18 months of age in any national animal identification system made by R-CALF USA and several other U.S. livestock groups, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today released an early version of its proposed rule to implement a national animal identification system titled “Traceability for Livestock Moving Interstate” (proposed rule).

The proposed rule would remove the hot-iron brand from among the list of official identification devices that cattle producers could choose to comply with the new federal mandate. It also encompasses cattle less than 18 months of age that would be triggered at USDA’s discretion one-year after USDA determines that older-aged cattle are substantially identified.

“The proposed rule, expected to be published in tomorrow’s Federal Register, not only spurns the U.S. livestock industries key recommendations regarding the hot-iron brand and younger cattle, but also, it snubs the critical recommendation by Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack’s own Advisory Committee on Animal Health, which urged the Secretary to provide at least a 120-day public comment period for the proposed rule. Instead, Vilsack is only providing a 90-day public comment period,” said R-CALF USA CEO Bill Bullard.

Bullard said the 90-day comment period will run at a time when tens of thousands of livestock producers are battling perhaps the nation’s most widespread and devastating drought and coincides with the cattle industry’s busy calf-weaning and calf-shipping season.

According to Bullard, USDA’s rejection of its own advisory committee’s recommendation to give producers more time to respond to the 114-page proposed rule suggests it already has decided to force this unacceptable mandate on U.S. livestock producers.

“USDA is running roughshod over the U.S. livestock industry with its bureaucratic ‘we know better than the entire industry’ attitude,” said Bullard adding, “USDA officials have deceived livestock producers by pretending to seriously consider producer recommendations and then springing these unworkable and unacceptable mandates on us in its proposed rule.”

“It’s obvious that USDA did not listen to the multitude of U.S. livestock producers who participated in the agency’s nationwide NAIS (National Animal Identification System) listening sessions in 2009 and overwhelmingly opposed USDA’s efforts to force individual identification on younger cattle and any mandate that would limit a producer’s choice regarding how they identify their livestock,” said R-CALF USA President George Chambers.

Chambers said his group will be calling for new listening sessions to help USDA recall the serious concerns producers raised earlier but have since been either forgotten or ignored.

Chambers said the proposed rule severely restricts producer choices because it removes completely the option for a producer to unilaterally choose to continue using the hot-iron brand when shipping cattle across state lines.

“Under the proposed rule, individual producers cannot choose on their own to continue using the hot-iron brand to identify their cattle. Nor can an individual state on its own choose to identify the cattle leaving their state with a hot-iron brand. Only if two state governments mutually agree to use the now delisted hot-iron brand will that option be available to either U.S. cattle producers or individual states,” Chambers said.

He continued to explain, “USDA did not have to attack our industry’s hot-iron brand or add younger cattle to the proposed rule in order to improve animal disease traceability in the United States, but we believe it has chosen to do so to appease the World Trade Organization and other international tribunals.”

Chambers also explained that the proposed rule itself provides absolute proof that the hot-iron brand remains an effective means of identifying animals in interstate commerce:

The proposed rule expressly allows producers to use hot-iron brands on their horses when shipping across state lines. This provision completely obliterates USDA’s feeble argument that it cannot require the 36 non-brand program states to accept a registered brand originating in the 14 brand program states as an official identification device — that’s precisely what USDA is doing with horses. It’s clear USDA is misleading us to achieve some ulterior motive.

“This proposed rule reduces flexibility and reduces producer choices and we are urging U.S. livestock producers to aggressively oppose the proposed rule,” Chambers concluded.

The public can submit comments on the proposed rule by either of the following methods:

- Federal eRulemaking Portal: Go to

http://www.regulations.gov/#!documentDetail;D=APHIS-2009-0091-0001.

- Postal Mail/Commercial Delivery: Send your comment to Docket No. APHIS-2009-

0091, Regulatory Analysis and Development, PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8, 4700 River

Road Unit 118, Riverdale, MD 20737-1238.

# # #

R-CALF USA (Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund, United Stockgrowers of America) is a national, nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring the continued profitability and viability of the U.S. cattle industry. R-CALF USA represents thousands of U.S. cattle producers on trade and marketing issues. Members are located across 46 states and are primarily cow/calf operators, cattle backgrounders, and/or feedlot owners. For more information, visit www.r-calfusa.com or, call 406-252-2516.

Note: The Proposed Rule can be viewed at http://r-calfusa.com/animal%20id/110809USDAProposedRule.pdf

Note: To remove yourself from this list, reply to this e-mail and include the word “unsubscribe” in the subject line.

Is the HSUS really humane? Is it a group designed to solicit millions from animal lovers and at the same time destroy ranchers and farmers who own and care for most American animals? Watch this short film for the facts. Brad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJUiSjSw0Gc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

SAN ANGELO, Texas — Since a new framework for animal disease traceability was introduced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture last year, cattle raisers have been up in arms for fear that the centuries-old hot-iron branding methods may be on the way out.

Instead, the USDA wants every cow to have a unique numerical ID, stamped on an inexpensive ear tag, to make it easier to track animals from the ranch to feedlots and the slaughterhouse.

Even as the USDA says it never set out to undermine the traditional brand, cattlemen feel that when the government steps in it will make things more complex. They also fear the withdrawal of federal support for branding might embolden animal-rights activists who call the practice barbaric.

The new rules set to replace the National Animal Identification System were strongly opposed by numerous livestock industries and associations, including Fort Worth-based Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association.

Although Western movies showing cowboys branding cattle with a hot iron have created the image that the practice started in the Old West, documented history gives verification the practice goes back thousands of years to the days of the ancient Greeks, Arabians, Romans and Egyptians.

Branding was actually introduced to the New World in 1541 by Spanish explorer Hernando Cortez. Branding of cattle became common in the United States after the Civil War. It was said that brands of every shape and design were on Longhorns coming out of Texas during the great trail drives of the 1800s.

Brands are registered in Texas by the county clerk of the county in which a rancher runs livestock. The brand must be registered by the county clerk for the brand to be considered a legal means of ownership. Texas brands have to be re-registered every 10 years.

When I worked for The Cattleman magazine in Fort Worth during the mid-1960s, a favorite assignment was visiting the brand department to research histories of cattle brands. The brands allow TSCRA special rangers quick identification of stolen cattle.

The cattle raisers association has 29 special rangers stationed strategically throughout Texas and Oklahoma who have in-depth knowledge of the cattle industry and are trained in facets of law enforcement. All are commissioned as special rangers by the Texas Department of Public Safety and Oklahoma’s law enforcement agency.

TSCRA market inspectors aid the special rangers by collecting brands and other identifying marks on 4 million to 5 million cattle sold at 115 livestock markets each year. The market inspectors report their findings to TSCRA’s Fort Worth headquarters, where the information is entered in a database retrieval system. It is that database a special ranger checks when receiving a theft call.

“Branding’s the simplest, most efficient way to do it. Why change?” Wil Bledsoe, a Hugo, Colo., rancher, recently told the Wall Street Journal.

“It is a great deal easier in court when stolen animals are fire branded. Prosecutors prefer to try cases where the animals have been branded,” said Scott Williamson of Seymour, a TSCRA special ranger.

Modern cattle rustlers would delight in the current highly promoted electronic ID. Any cattle rustler could easily remove, replace, change and/or cut off ear tags and electronic pins.

The goal of the new USDA framework should be to enable the cattle industry, state and federal animal health officials to respond rapidly and effectively to animal health emergencies, say TSCRA officials.

Cattle raisers remain engaged with state and federal animal health officials to ensure that any animal disease traceability program is solely for the purpose of responding rapidly and effectively to animal health emergencies and does not affect ranchers’ ability to market cattle, officials said.

Jerry Lackey writes about agriculture. Contact him at jlackey@wcc.net or 325-949-2291.

Note:Sec Vilsack knows that 16% of the US 2010 consumed beef was imported. He knows that for the last 21 years the USA has not produced enough beef to feed the nation. Why then, pray tell, does he think it is important to export beef to China, much of which has to be purchased outside the USA? Why would the marble halls of USDA contain people so far removed from the real world to assume it commercially feasable to force mandatory electronic ear tags on nearly a hundred million US cattle just to sell a few ocean containers of beef to China? Who comes up with this math? The cattle ID enforcement brain-child is not about exporting! It is not about livestock disease!

–Editor

Inside U.S. Trade

Daily News

Vilsack Indicates New Traceability Rule Will Help Exports, But Exact Impact Unclear

Posted: May 23, 2011

A soon-to-be-released proposed rule from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) imposing a mandatory animal traceability system will help win more market access for U.S. meat producers by enhancing the ability of the U.S. government to respond to an animal disease outbreak, Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said at a May 12 House Agriculture Committee hearing.

“One of the concerns that we often hear from our trading partners is [about] the capacity to basically trace back at least to the state of origin any problem with animal health, which is why this traceability system is important,” Vilsack said.

Only about 30 percent of cattle producers participate in the current, voluntary traceability system, Vilsack said, and the current system does not “provide us the certainty and the guarantee” that the new system will. “So we think we’re going to get much more acceptance from this effort, and that should reassure our trading partners,” he said.

One meat packing industry source agreed that a comprehensive traceability system is important to expanding exports of beef to the European Union, which has so many information requirements for imports that traceability while not expressly required is necessary nevertheless. A mandatory system could enable more companies to ship there, he said.

Japan, which currently restricts access to its market to U.S. beef exports from cattle younger than 20 months, may be more willing to further open its beef market in light of a new, mandatory traceability system, this source said, because the United States could argue it is better equipped to deal with any animal health problem.

While the new system is intended to be comprehensive and mandatory, it is unclear whether it would meet the demands of all U.S. trade partners.

For instance, China has demanded that the United States implement a system that allows cattle to be traced back not only to their state of origin, but to the farm where they were born. China has said the United States must meet this condition before it will accept beef imports from the United States (Inside U.S. Trade,Nov. 12).

A spokeswoman for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) would not comment on whether the new proposal would be able to meet that requirement. She also would not give a more firm timeline for the proposal’s release than the one offered by Vilsack, who said it would be published by “late spring or early summer.”

But there are signs that the program would not go as far on traceability as China has demanded.

While mandatory, the new program will only apply to animals moving interstate, as these animals pose the biggest risk for spreading disease nationwide, according to a March USDA report giving the initial outlines of the proposal.

Before cattle are moved and sold across state lines, they will be affixed with a tag that bears a code indicating the state or American Indian tribe of origin and a unique numeric identifier. The state or tribe where the animal originated will then be responsible for maintaining detailed information of the animal’s origin.

This means that, in the case of a disease outbreak, it could be traced back tothe farm from which it came.

But Bill Bullard, CEO of the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF), said in an interview that while the system strengthens the government’s current ability to conduct trace-backs, it will likely not enable the government to trace back all cattle to their place of birth.

For example, if a cow changed hands several times within a state before being moved across state lines, state records would reflect only the farm where the cow was held last. That said, authorities could rely upon brands or other records kept by ranchers to trace the animal back to its farm of origin in these instances, Bullard said.

In the case of a cow that was raised and slaughtered in the same state and never moved to another, it is possible that no records would be kept under the new system. So-called “slick cows,” those with no brands and no ear tag, could also cause potential identification problems if record-keeping was not detailed, Bullard acknowledged.

So could a cow whose ear tag had fallen off, he added one reason his organization is pushing USDA to maintain the hot-iron brand as a recognized form of official identification.

The focus of the program is cattle, although it will also include changes to the way horses and poultry are tracked; regulations on swine, along with sheep and goats, will not be affected, according to the USDA report.

According to a spokeswoman for USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), the new rule will be announced on the APHIS homepage and posted on Regulations.gov for a 60-day comment period.

“Once the comment period has closed, no comments will be accepted,” the spokeswoman said. “Consideration and response [to] all submitted comments will appear in the final rule 12 to 15 months after the close of the comment period.”

Bullard said the forthcoming proposal addresses the primary criticisms of the failed National Animal Identification System program (NAIS): that a traceability system would violate ranchers’ confidentiality and leave them unfairly exposed to liability suits in cases of food poisoning. They had also worried about the cost of the program.

The new proposal solves these issues by storing information in databases at the state level or with tribes, rather than at the federal level, where it could potentially be subject to freedom of information requests, Bullard said.

Ranchers worried that kind of producer data could be used by meat packers to gain leverage in negotiating prices, or by people who became sick after eating bad meat and wanted to sue everyone in the supply chain, he explained.

Allowing the use of cheap, metal ear tags instead of the more costly electronic tags proposed under NAIS also largely solves the problem of cost, Bullard said.

Bob Stallman, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, said he was not familiar with the upcoming proposal but emphasized that his group has favored a voluntary approach in the past.

“Our policy has supported voluntary traceability programs,” Stallman told reporters at a May 17 press lunch, adding that some of the group’s members are involved in animal identification for more premium markets.

“There’s some involved in that,” he said. “So they’re not [all] opposed to the idea of traceability. What they’ve been opposed to is who has the information and how much is it going to cost, and how’s the information going to be used,” he said, echoing similar worries to those expressed by Bullard.

But Bullard called other parts of the forthcoming proposal a “broken promise” to his members because USDA had assured them that hot-iron brands would still be considered official identifiers under the new system, and that cattle under 18 months old would not be covered.

Bullard said the latest draft of the proposal recognizes only metal or electronic ear tags as official identifiers and would begin to cover cattle of all ages once 70 percent of cattle older than 18 months roughly the breeding age have been registered in the tracing system.

This version of the proposal has been submitted to the Office of Management and Budget and should be released soon, he added, but R-CALF is urging USDA not to publish it until those provisions are changed.

His group wants branding to be recognized as a universal identifier because ear tags can easily fall off, or be replaced by thieves. Under the proposal, brands could only be recognized through special state-to-state agreements. In the interview, Bullard also said that including younger “feeder” cattle in the system is unnecessarily burdensome.

“Our position is, there has been no demonstrated need to identify these younger animals,” Bullard said.

“We have been highly successful in eradicating diseases by focusing only on the breeding herd. And so we want to focus on the breeding herd, and when that is accomplished, we want to do a needs assessment to determine if the additional cost and burden upon the industry outweigh the benefits of the program.”

“We believe that these feeder cattle are already sufficiently traceable during their relatively short lifespans,” he added, “[and] that there is no need to mandate their identification at this time.”

Letter to the Editor

The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) started a no-win war for the USDA. On February 5, 2010, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that NAIS was flawed and would be terminated, never to return. Now, and even when it was announced as dead, a new-name, Animal Disease Traceability Program is full throttle. ADT is a clone sister to NAIS!

Dislike for the old NAIS program has multiplied daily by clans of all flavors.

It is easy to quote the bad results of the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) of Australia, the total costs on livestock producers, enforcement fees, and serious concerns about individual property rights.

As USDA marches stone-faced onward for 100% compliance on the repackaged, ADT, livestock producers strapped for cash fear the worst.

A prime selling point by USDA is the importance to move fast in case of an outbreak of some new foreign or unknown livestock disease. At first blush it sounds compassionate, until facts reveal that the industry already has a major epidemic on US dairy farms, and the USDA has proven for years to have little concern to stop it. Is there a tunip truck-load of hypocrisy showing between the lines?

The Disease USDA Refuses to Trace.

In 2004 the USDA estimated the Johne’s infection rate to be at 20%. Today, reliable estimates reveal over 60% of the nation’s dairy herds are comingled with Johne’s positive cows, a 300% increase in only four years, but the USDA doesn’t feel this is a problem. The USDA appears comfortable with this major epidemic, and has no plan for acceleration about the problem. The USDA estimates an annual financial loss as a result of Johne’s in dairy herds to be $200,000,000. For one year the Johne’s loss is nearly as much as USDA has invested in grants promoting NAIS. This annual loss is more than 1000% over the eradication costs of the US Avian Influenza fiasco, a statistic USDA tossed out to tout the serious need of an NAIS mandatory system.

USDA is not totally avoiding Johne’s. A token budget is allocated for research, public awareness and press releases on how to manage a dairy with Johne’s. The amount of that budget was reduced in the recent Farm Bill — now it is just peanuts!

If the USDA is concerned about (any) disease, why aren’t they shaking their fist at Johne’s? Sometimes USDA pays less attention to animal diseases that do not effect human health. Perhaps that is not so — reliable information connects Johne’s with the human disease, Crohn’s. Crohn’s Disease, virtually unheard of a few years ago, is on the rise. Today, up to two million US citizens are infected. Crohn’s Disease can be diagnosed in children, who will suffer a life of pain. The stark similarities of each disease causes knowledgeable scientist to be certain that once bovine Johne’s is eliminated, the same process can be effective to solve the human coequal.

How to Spot a Problem?

The signs of Johne’s Disease in cattle are closely related to Crohn’s Disease in humans:

• Frequent diarrhea
• Cramps and pains in stomach
• Feces blood
• No stamina
• Internal bleeding
• No appetite, fever
• Intestine Obstructions
• Internal pain and abscesses

There is no known cure for Johne’s or Crohn’s. Some medical assistance is available for people.

Johne’s signs of death in cattle is a slow withering away of all body condition in the final stages.

Where does Johne’s Come From?

Johne’s is contracted by ingesting feces from infected animals. Animals who are raised on clean grass pastures seldom get infected. Dairy herds are often contained with beef cattle herds to provide a more diverse farm income. Many beef herds with Johne’s have traced their infected stock back to dairy raised purchases. Today Johne’s is found in beef herds, yet with much lower percentages than dairies. It is rapidly consuming highly productive dairy cows.

If the USDA and corporate proponents of the old NAIS felt disease was important, they’d at least exhibit a good faith effort about Johne’s. The most costly disease of our generation has the USDA urgency of watching paint dry. USDA’s rubber neck avoidance of Johne’s shows one of the most shameful milk-toast approaches to disease eradication in USDA history.

What is the answer?

Like other diseases, only two things are needed to permanently deal with Johne’s, one fool-proof vaccination and one fool-proof negative/positive test method. At this time neither appear to be a consideration much less a priority to USDA. USDA is totally consumed in promoting NAIS, or now ADT.

Tracing Infected Herds?

Is locating infected herds a problem with Johne’s? If it was announced that a vaccine and a valid test method has been developed, cattle owners would stampede to use it. USDA will not have any problem locating herds. The owners of infected cattle are always the first to be concerned and promptly deal with health issues. If USDA does their job, the concern of premises location is a mute point, and always has been.

As long as USDA procrastinates on a good-faith attempt to deal with Johne’s disease, anything they say about their “come hell or high water” new ADT enforcement is totally and completely bogus! It will be impossible to convince livestock producers that the new ADT enforcement will do a “gnats bristle” of good to eliminate disease when Johne’s is not considered a priority USDA issue.

Until USDA can get their priorities straight, producers should not believe USDA will do better tracing disease with the quackery of a costly ADT enforcement.

More info: www.naisinfocentral.net, www.naisSTINKS.com, www.libertyark.net, and www.FarmAndRanchFreedom.org.

Quotes and data provided by USDA, Gary McEntyre DVM, NAFAW, Countryside, Peggy Steward, Dr. Max Thornsberry, Brad Headtel, Jerri, Darol Dickinson, and Jim Silwa. Thank you for contributing.

An electronic animal ID system has been the passion of USDA for over 18 years. Recently, Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack announced that hot iron branding was an acceptable form of future animal ID.

History completely agrees with the secretary’s findings.

Branding History

The western cowboy did not invent hot iron branding. The documented history of branding goes back for thousands of years. Scenes of oxen being branded on hieroglyphics are depicted on Egyptian tombs as early as 2,700 BC.

Hot iron branding animal ID, for proof of title, has not changed for over 5,000 years. The book of Zechariah records this process in chapter 3 verse 2, “a brand plucked out of the fire.”

On a darker side of history, the use of a hot iron as proof of ownership went beyond cattle to an area people today prefer not to think about, the ID branding of human beings. From days of the ancient Greeks, Arabians, Romans and Egyptians, slaves were often marked as property with a small brand by their owner. The practice has continued in slave owning countries around the world. More recently branding has been used on prisoners and self branding which is termed “art branding” or “scarification.”

Hernando Cortez is credited with bringing the first branding irons to the Americas in 1541. His personal holding brand was three crosses.

Branding became common in the US after the Civil War. Eventually, in Canada, the second session of the Northwest Territories government on August 1, 1878 established a law requiring all livestock to be branded.

Brands of every shape and design were visible on every Longhorn that came out of Texas during the great trail drives. Spanish brands are often artistically designed with cursive, complicated circular characters. The western American ranchers chose simpler block and open shapes, which proved harder to alter and easier to read.

Designing a Personal Brand

Designs and names of brands are as colorful as the people who use them. The traditions and pride of ownership attached to brands is a volume in itself.

Selecting a brand can be a simple thing or as detailed and historically meaningful as the owner desires. Most brands are based on the owner’s or the ranch’s initials. They may be a symbol, letter, number, character or combinations of connected or separate figures. A brand symbol, for example, may be a hat, fish, pitch fork, shovel, hook, bell, spur, staple, horse shoe, or wine glass. The list goes on.

Brands are read like books from top to bottom and from left to right. Without a doubt, it is a historical, respected, language all it’s own.

A branding iron should be of quarter-inch clean iron made to the desired shape. Small cattle should be branded with irons about 3″ tall and larger adult stock can be about 4.”

A horse iron can be as small as 2″.

The handle should be about thirty inches long with an end grip holding device. When applied to stock, separate letters should be at least one inch apart so as not to appear attached.

Notches or “breaks” are necessary on all irons where the bars join or intersect, about 1/4″ to 3/8″ wide. This prevents blotching in the corners. Letters like the top point of an A are particularly prone to blotch and always should be left open. Letters like L, C, U, I, J, S and open shapes yield themselves to clean readable brands.

Holding Brand Registration

No ownership holding brand should be applied until legally registered. Registration is done in most states through the Dept. of Agriculture. A brand design is submitted for approval and recorded for a set fee, and only the recorded owner of that design can legally use it on their livestock.

No two brands will be registered that are, or appear to be, the same design. In the eastern U.S. many states only have a few hundred registered brands, so it is easy to acquire a simple, clean brand.

Colorado, on the other hand, has registered over 60,000 brands making it difficult to get a new brand with less than 4 letters. Texas, not to be outdone, claims over 230,000 registered brands on the books.

Code Brand Records

Simple brand codes may reveal to the owner information like pedigrees, year of birth, or ranch division where born. In order to keep the brand process simple and requiring minimal time to apply, fewer letters are always better.

A single number indicating the year of birth is quite often used. The current year 2010 would be “0″. At a glance the owner can easily know the year of birth. The year code can be part of the regular numbering system, over, under, in front of, or beyond the animal ID brand number. Brands are simple and can be recorded on a paper tablet providing a permanent record that lives well beyond the life of the animal. The numbering process is practiced by most ranches providing a non duplicate ID for every animal traceable through the records of USDA through the state brand registration system.

Confinement

Successfully applying a clear distinct ID brand requires the recipient to be still. In the open range, cattle were roped and laid on the ground for branding. Some of the best clear brands are done this way.

The same process can be used in a small herd where the critter is physically laid down, not on the open range, but in a back yard corral. This is recommended for young calves, and not adults.

When adult cattle are branded, a metal squeeze chute is safe and efficient. The side squeeze chutes eliminate the head catch and restrain the critter better from head swinging. This provides safer name tagging, vapor tagging, and OCV tattoos. Plus, the side swing confinements are always the safest for releasing an animal from either side. A general purpose chute sells for $1250 to $2500.

Animal Safety/Care

All processes in cattle care should be bloodless. Although tags and pins are numerous, each tag entry can puncture arteries, hide, muscles and pierce major ear cartilage, which always bleeds. With bleeding can come infection, insect attraction, irritation, or partial loss of hearing and ear function.

The searing process of branding should never draw blood and is self sealing. It becomes a permanent ID in seconds and no medication should be needed in the future.

State Brand Laws

Secretary Vilsack has wisely acknowledged the State Brand Inspection Systems (SBIS) are good animal ID. From the Mississippi west every state has brand laws and inspection procedures, with some dating well over a hundred years old — well tested by time. Branding is economical and a system currently in use by nearly every major cattle raiser. It doesn’t require more fees, expanded USDA staff, computer education, high tech equipment purchases (not proven to perform under range conditions) or pernicious enforcement fines. The old brand laws work for all the right reasons. Last year SBIS visually inspected and documented 27,000,000 cattle according to James Clement, DVM. (See Animal ID, Another View)

Heating the Irons

More irons have been heated with wood than any other way. A hot wood fire serves the purpose well. Today most people are in a hurry and use either electric irons or heat with propane. A small propane bottle will heat a lot of irons and may be transported easily without the limitations of an electric cord.

The iron, when heated properly, should appear a light ash color. An iron heated in a flame will first accumulate carbon and appear very black. A black iron is too cold. It may be hot enough to burn or singe the hair, but not hot enough to penetrate the roots of the hair follicles, essential for a permanent mark.

Red hot, yellow, or white irons should be cooled before use. A red hot iron may brand too fast. The beauty of clear clean brands comes with experience.

Applying the Brand

It is impossible to make a rule for the length of time the iron should be held to the hide, because the condition of the hair and the temperature vary.

To apply the brand, move the handle in a slow, rocking motion which will vary the pressure. A critter is not a flat surface so a flat iron may not clearly mark at all corners. It is better to remove the iron after a couple of seconds, check the mark and reapply the iron to the parts not adequately branded. Always error on the light side rather than over doing the time and pressure.

With the first brand effort, test the result. Hand rub the brand and briskly remove the charred hair. If the animal has been properly branded, a clear outline mark of the complete brand will have a saddle leather light rust color to it.

On the other hand, if the iron was not hot enough, only the hair will be burned and short partially branded hair will be in the brand design. Re-heat and place the iron exactly on the same spot and allow additional time.

In Europe numerous ear tag computer methods are used. Year by year more electronic ear devices become mandatory, attached at birth. (calf already has 4 tags - required by law)

When branding is complete, a generous rub with bacon grease using a paint mitten will promptly soothe and lubricate the hide.

An adult steer has hide 10 times thicker than a human. A good brand only enters about one tenth into the total thickness of the hide. Penetration of the skin’s epidermis outer layer is the goal of a correct brand. Correct placement is below the hair and above the dermis tissue.

What is the Real Reason?

Proof of title is the historic reason for a brand. It has worked for over 5,000 years. It is the best permanent ID for an owner’s records. Permanent fire brand ID not only works on a live animal, but continues to be a valid ID on the hide after processing. Unfortunately, there are always unscrupulous people who want to steal or “rustle” livestock. In the fifth century BC, I Chronicles 7-21 records that the whole family of Ephraim was killed for “trying” to rustle cattle.

Modern cattle rustlers, which are numerous, truly love the current highly promoted electronic ID. Any cattle rustler can easily remove, replace, change tags and electronic pins. To speed up the process rustlers order a Tag-Sav-R Ear Tag Remover from Nasco for $25.75. This jiffy tool was developed to back-out the pin arrow and allow a person to replace it into another animal. It only takes a couple seconds on most pins. If $25.75 cost too much, Nasco has a more affordable Safety Tag Knife for $3.95, cut those unsightly tags out and throw them away.

To think the 840 pins are legal ID or even correct source verification is absurd.

When a rustler is in a hurry to haul-out, it only takes a second to cut the whole ear tip off. That is not a permanent animal ID — ask any successful cattle rustler.

Special TSCRA Ranger Scott Williamson, who is working on several rustling cases in Texas says, “It is a great deal easier in court when stolen animals are fire branded. Prosecutors prefer to try cases where the animals have been branded. If you can prove to the prosecutor that he’s going to be able to absolutely identify an animal in court, he knows he’s not sticking his neck out to take the case.”

No type of animal ear ID has ever held up in court for a conviction, yet hot iron brands have.

Every major cattle producing nation on earth used fire brands. The permanence and stability of a fire brand is superior to all other ID methods including the old “brite” USDA tags that are being newly promoted for ADT.

So, after the smoke and the dust are settled, and all the government bureaucrats have put up their crayolas, trust your neighbors — but fire brand your cattle!

Livestock gobble up the antibiotics

Melissa Healy. Los Angeles Times
December 14, 2010, 12:35 p.m.

The U.S.-raised animals we eat consumed about 29 million pounds of antibiotics in the last year alone, according to a first-ever Food and Drug Administration accounting of antimicrobial drug use by the American livestock industry.

The release of the figures — in a little-noticed posting on the FDA’s website Friday — came in response to a 2008 law requiring the federal government to collect and disseminate antibiotic use in livestock as part of the Animal Drug User Fee Act. The Union of Concerned Scientists, which authored a 2001 report that was highly critical of the routine practice of feeding antibiotics to livestock, estimated the yearly animal consumption of antibiotics to be eight times as large as the volume of antibiotics produced for human consumption in the U.S.

Mardi Mellon, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists’ Food and Environment program, said the new report corroborates the 2001 findings of the group’s report, titled “Hogging It.”

“Antimicrobial use in U.S. agriculture is way out of proportion” to what is necessary, said Mellon. “That poses dire risk to human health by undermining the effectiveness of these drugs,” she added.

Farmers feed these medications to the animals they raise for market in an effort to prevent disease from spreading among poultry, pork, dairy herds and beef cattle. Some medications also promote faster growth in many animals. The ubiquitous use of these medications is controversial because they are often used to counter the effects of raising animals in poor conditions.

But they represent a major public health concern too: the widespread administration of antibiotics to prevent infections in animals has made those same antibiotics less effective in fighting off disease in animals and in humans. That is because, when under constant bombardment by existing antibiotic medications, the viruses that cause disease evolve at an accelerated rate just to stay alive. The results: new viruses that are resistant to existing antibiotics, and a population that is increasingly vulnerable to them.

The American Medical Assn. this summer called antibiotic resistance “a major public health problem” and called on the Obama administration and Congress to take action to address it.

The Obama administration recognizes the problem, but has not acted to stem antibiotics’ use on animals, said Mellon of the Union of Concerned Scientists. “We hope the FDA will motivate the administration to take concrete steps to protect public health by limiting inappropriate antimicrobial use,” she added.

Food purchased from local farms, or seasonal local producers will be less prone to excessive medication than food produced by large factory farms or imported from distant countries.

Producers used more Tetracyclines (including Chlortetracycline and Oxytetracycline) than any other antibiotics–a total of 4.6 million kilograms of the medication yearly.