MONTROSE - In the wake of Wednesday's announcement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture that a confirmed case of mad cow disease had been traced to a cow in Texas, state and area officials are touting a national identification program as one of the best ways to keep animal herds safe.
In Colorado, the initial steps toward a national ID program will start with the effort to register the premises where livestock are located, whether they're ranches, feedlots, sale yards, or packing plants.
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The information collected by officials will be placed in a database run by Research Management Systems, a private company in Fort Collins.
John Heller, the animal ID project specialist at RMS, said the study hopes to register 20 percent of the premises in Colorado by November.
The work done in Colorado will come under the banner of the Tri-National Livestock Health and Identification Consortium, which includes New Mexico, Arizona, several Indian Nations in the southwest and two states in Mexico.
That group will serve as a testing ground for the U.S. Department of Agriculture's national program, which hopes to have all premises registered by 2008 and record animal movement by 2009.
Although the system will track all livestock, Grady said that when it's fully operational it will be an important tool in combating mad cow disease, which is properly named bovine spongiform encephalopathy
"In the case of BSE, where we know it's a very, very long incubation, it's important to know where that animal was years ago. In the case of something like foot-and-mouth disease, it's important to know where an animal was weeks ago."
If a disease is found, identifying sick animals individually would also reduce the burden on the rest of the livestock community.
"One of the things we like to emphasize is that with a food animal tracking system, we can be specific and we don't have to quarantine all of western Colorado," he said, using a hypothetical example. "We can quarantine three specific ranches, which should make 99 percent of the people happy."
Last summer the state ran a smaller program, involving 13 cattle operators across the state.
The Wolf Ranch near Ridgway took part in that study with 621 cattle from the ranch tagged as part of the program.
Wayne Wolff, the ranch's manager, thinks an ID program would help the cattle industry.
"It will help the individual ranchers that way with any individual disease," Wolff said.
He also thinks the program would help with the marketing of beef by reassuring consumers.
Wolff said one concern with any ID program is the costs of the technology used to track the animals. The tags that are put on the animals cost around $2.25 per tag.
Heller estimated that the wands used to transfer data from the tags to the database can cost anywhere from $500 to $1,200. He added that those prices could be coming down as he's seen them decrease by nearly a third in the last three years.
Despite those concerns, Wolff said the ranch would take part in the ID program.
Another concern among producers is the confidentiality of the information that gets recorded.
In May, The National Cattleman's Beef Association announced plans for its own ID program out of fear that a government run project would be subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act.
Robbie Baird LeValley, a livestock and range specialist for the Tri-River Extension Office says she understands the ranchers' fears, and overcoming them is something that can only be done through more education.
"It's a continual process. You don't meet everyone with one meeting or one phone call," she said. "Some people it takes a one-on-one contact."
Contact Matt Hildner via e-mail at matth@montrosepress.com
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