Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Animal Identification
Does Not Equal Food Safety
Fact Sheet • July 2009
C onsumers get a lot of information about the things they buy, whether it’s
monitoring the progress of a package making its way across the country or the
label in a shirt that says where the fabric was made and the final product assembled.
So should consumers expect any less when it comes to Many farmers and ranchers don’t want anything to do with
food? Everything from public opinion polls to the explo- this program because industry and the USDA seem intent
sive growth of programs that connect consumers directly to on taking tracking to a ridiculous level, with the potential
farmers show that consumers don’t want mystery meat — to force small farmers to track every chicken, or require
they want to know what they’re eating and whether it is safe.someone who keeps a horse or a couple of goats to regis-
ter them with the government. To make matters worse,
Unfortunately, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) the rules for the program are geared towards the largest
and big meat companies are trying to use consumers as producers, who use confinement and other methods that
their cover for pushing a livestock tracking system that make animals easier to track and benefit from economies
could permanently change the structure of the meat indus- of scale for purchasing electronic tracking devices and
try, and not for the better. equipment. USDA estimates show that among livestock
producers that don’t currently tag their beef cattle, the
The tracking program is the National Animal Identifica- smallest producers — those with less than 50 head of cattle
tion System (NAIS), a registry for livestock and for the — would incur the highest costs.
premises where animals live or visit. The stated purpose
of the system is to aid government responses to outbreaks USDA and the meat industry — while always officially
of animal disease, and pressure for the program increased careful to characterize NAIS as an animal health program
after the discovery of mad cow disease in the United — tend to invoke improving meat safety as a selling point
States. Supporters of the program point to a demand for for the program. But NAIS does not offer consumers any
“traceability” by export customers in countries like Japan assurances of food safety.
and Korea. Right now, the federal government says the
program is voluntary, but some states have forced livestock Why NAIS Doesn’t Mean Safer Meat
producers into the system against their will, and state gov-
ernments and trade associations are putting tremendous Tracking Ends at the Slaughterhouse. As recalls
pressure on producers to sign up. of millions of pounds of meat become a regular feature
of the nightly news, a tracking system might seem worth
the effort. But the tracking capability of NAIS stops at the
slaughterhouse, so it doesn’t help the government or retail-
ers track contaminated meat back to its source.