Market News

Concerns about NAIS involve 'speed of commerce'

The Livestock Marketing Association isconcerned about what a National Animal ID System might do to the timeliness of marketing livestock. LMA Information Director John McBride refers to it as speed of commerce.

“Speed of commerce means processing and marketing cattle on sale day within just a few hours,minimizing weight shrinkage, protecting the safety and welfare of the market employees and the livestock they handle and then moving the animals on the next destination with a minimum of delay,” McBride told Brownfield Thursday.

Market owners, says McBride are alsoconcerned about what technology will be required to identify livestock. The LMA is pushing for the USDA to establish a standardized technology compatible from one livestock operation to another.

The organization’s position is that NAIS should remain voluntary, because,says McBride, market owners will be saddled with responsibility if livestock sellers show up at markets with unidentified livestock.

“What it is going to do is it’s going to make our people the policemen for this program,” McBride said, “and of course theydon’t want to be that.”

Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack says the agency will gather more input during listening sessions across the country. The Secretary says he plans to hit the road gathering opinions by holding listening sessions about NAIS.

“So that we don’t end up with a system that people resist, people resent and that people figure out ways to get around,” Vilsack told reporters this week following a roundtable discussion involving stakeholders on both sides of the issue.

“We are, in fact,taking information and being educated about the various positions and listening very carefully to how people articulate those positions,” said Vilsack in audio provided by the USDA, “to determine whether or not you can identify common threads that can identify common threads that couldpotentially be the basis of a better accepted system.”

Secretary Vilsack acknowledges that there are very passionate feelings concerning a National Animal ID System.