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Wilkinson: Congress Needs to Stop Fear Mongering Over Cattle Health

Recently, Congresswoman Harriet Hageman from Wyoming was in our state for a rally against one of the most important animal health tools farmers and ranchers have. Congresswoman Hageman says that animal disease traceability through the use of electronic identification tags is all a big government conspiracy, but the truth is South Dakota ranchers need effective traceability to protect our herd against foreign animal disease.

Traceability should not be a controversial issue. Since 2013, farmers and ranchers who ship cattle 18 months of age or older, rodeo and exhibition cattle, or dairy cattle across state lines have been required to use a form of “official animal ID,” which has previously been a metal ear tag. Other producers have been using brands or tattoos, and those options are still available to  them. But now, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is simply changing the type of tag used from a metal one that must be visually read to an electronic tag that can be scanned or read. Frankly, I’m fed up with the fearmongering going on in our industry about this change.

Animal disease traceability is not some sort of government conspiracy. These EID tags will not track your movements. They are not GPS devices. They cannot track emissions. Your private information will not be exposed to activists. Yet, Congresswoman Hageman keeps trying to muddy the waters and talk as if a simple cattle ear tag that thousands of producers are already voluntarily using will be the death of the U.S. cattle industry. 



As a rancher, I have fought tooth and nail against government involvement in our business. I know we don’t want to invite more government involvement on our farms and ranches, but you know what would bring the government right to our doorstep? A foreign animal disease outbreak.

If a foreign animal disease like foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) were to appear in this country, all cattle movement from coast to coast would be shut down for a minimum of 72 hours, and likely much longer. Think of those three days without a single head of cattle on a truck, moving to a livestock barn, or leaving a farm or ranch—our rural economy would be crippled. After that, the U.S. government would move state to state to test animals and see which producers could move their livestock and which would be forced to depopulate their entire herd. If you don’t like the thought of the Department of Agriculture knowing the serial number of an ear tag on cattle moving across state lines, you really won’t like a government inspector stopping any of your cattle from leaving your ranch.




The U.S. hasn’t experienced a large-scale outbreak of FMD since 1929 and it’s too easy to think it will never happen, but the risk is very real. FMD can be spread on equipment or vehicles, through airborne transmission, or even on a person’s clothes or shoes. The federal government estimates that over 77.7 million international visitors will travel to the U.S. this year, every day we are unloading cargo at ports across the country, and that doesn’t even count the millions of illegal aliens encountered by U.S. Border Patrol this year.1  All it takes is one person walking across the border or getting off a plane to track a foreign animal disease like FMD into the country


To protect our unique American farming and ranching legacy, we need a fast way to trace and isolate foreign animal disease at the speed of commerce, and that is exactly where EID tags come in. These tags are insurance at the price of $3 a tag that could save us billions of dollars in losses from a disease outbreak. Sending paper documents from the farm or ranch, then to 
the veterinarian and then to the state or federal government takes time. Time is something we simply don’t have the luxury of when we are facing a disease outbreak. Instead of coming to our state to scare ranchers, Congresswoman Hageman should be working to secure our border, protect our American cattle herd, and make it easier for ranchers like me to access tools like EID tags. Perhaps the best explanation of Hageman fear mongering is that she was R-CALF’s attorney and logic doesn’t seem to mean anything.

1 U.S. Customs and Border Patrol, U.S. Border Patrol and Office of Field Operations Encounters.
Accessed via: https://www.cbp.gov/newsroom/stats/southwest-land-border-encounters

Editorial by Todd Wilkinson, Cattle Rancher from De Smet, SD