More ID

It would be worth your time to visit No Mandatory ID and read today’s post. It contains a letter written to the Sioux Falls Argus Leader about that paper’s editorial stance on National ID. Seems the paper thinks that we dumb farmers ought to just suck it up and smile while we pay to make the USDA look good.

I have heard way too much whining that they can’t trace that last BSE case in Alabama anywhere. This is supposed to constitute proof that we need national ID. They are pretending that it will make a difference to someone somewhere if they can find out where she was born and who she hobnobbed with over her long life.
Wrong. If that cow was over ten years old, most every animal she had contact with over her life is already dead.

Long since.

The only beef cows who hang around for over ten years are likely to be brood cows and breeding bulls. They are after all, beef cows. So where do you really think they are now? And who would gain what by tracing them?

Besides which, if you look back you will see that at least here on this continent, BSE cases have been so sporadic that there rarely, if ever, is more than one case in one herd. Heck there have only been three cases in this whole country. The disease isn’t contagious in the normal sense, cows have to eat infected feed to get it. Add to that the fact that BSE cases are on the decline world wide and you have the whole story. National ID is hogwash, bull crap and bad news and papers like the Argus Leader that support it are full of it.

NAIS
farming