Editorial: Cattlemen’s stampede

Saturday, June 24, 2006 | 7:50 a.m.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has scrapped its plans for a mandatory cattle tracking system that would allow investigators to identify potentially diseased cows after an outbreak.

The USDA already has spent $84 million to develop such a program with plans to have it in place by 2009, The Wall Street Journal reported this week. But three years after the initiative was launched, it faces significant opposition, the newspaper reported. The biggest obstacle is the cattle industry, which has the USDA's ear. Several powerful groups, including the National Cattlemen's Beef Association, oppose such a plan for various reasons.

These critics argue that animal rights activists could use the data to target their industry, and that certain information - herd sizes, for instance - could be used by buyers to manipulate beef prices. Some have even suggested that a mandatory system amounts to unnecessary government intrusion.

So now the USDA appears to support a voluntary tracking system with numerous private databases - a plan advocated by the very industry groups that the USDA is supposed to regulate. It is clearly the wrong approach. A voluntary system won't work because, as food safety advocates correctly note, participation is likely to be spotty.

Some ranchers would be reluctant to voluntarily participate because they would be uneasy about government probes that could trace diseased cattle back to their operations. And a voluntary program may not be sufficient to track fast-moving diseases like foot-and-mouth, food safety advocates told the Journal.

But mandatory tracking could go a long way to both protecting human health and calming consumer jitters about the potential spread of cattle diseases. Mandatory tracking also could help the beef industry, which suffered an estimated $5 billion in export losses in the last two and a half years, the Journal reported. Japan, South Korea and China refuse U.S. beef amid fears of mad cow. Nations including Australia market their mandatory tracking systems in an effort to seize U.S. market shares, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns has said.

About 40 nations have some form of mandatory tracking system, including developing nations such as Namibia and Botswana. It is a travesty that the United States not only hasn't already joined them but that it very well may not for the foreseeable future.