"The eartag hole shows how easy those eartags can be lost, even by goofy looking cows."
Lee, a local reader, saw the problem right away in this picture of a cow involved in the foot and mouth disease outbreak in Great Britain. Even though GB has a cumbersome and extremely restrictive National Animal ID System, not only has the disease spread unchecked reaching 8 farms by this time yesterday, but clearly cows over there don't retain tags any better than they do here in the USA. While researching this week's Farm Side I also discovered that the cows on one farm had foot and mouth for four weeks before anyone noticed. Guess the ID system and tags didn't help much there either.
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3 comments:
Well, I feel dumb. I just thought it was a spot.
Is it a big surprise that the ID tag system doesn't work?
Hi Stacy, nothing dumb about it...I think it only struck me because I am so ticked off about the concept that putting tags in cows' ears is somehow going to change the course of disease outbreaks.
Hey there Jan, not to anybody who tags cows....I think in our milking herd of over fifty there are about three who still have tags by the time they are four or five.....we just know them because they look different.
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