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| Great Britain doesn’t need animal ID and neither do we |
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| In your Aug 22 edition, page 10, article entitled “Need for animal ID program” is a drastic twist of reality. Please check the absurdity of this interview and poorly advised viewpoint.
Article reads: The recent outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in Great Britain is another reminder to the USA, of the need for a NAIS.
My comment: No, the two British farms that had suspects for foot-and-mouth disease were identified easily and a government vet was on the farm within 90 minutes.
There was no problem finding the animals or the farms. Interestingly enough both British farms effected by the foot-and-mouth suspects were right down- stream nearby the Pirbright research facility, home to the vaccine manufacturer Merial and the government funded Institute for Animal Health.
The Merial lab was working on a vaccine for the exact strain found in the two quarantined farms. An order for 300,000 doses of vaccine has been purchased from Merial to be ready if needed.
Chris Galen of the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) said, “Right now we have a significant number of farms identified. But there are a lot more other premises that we are not aware of and that is why we in the dairy industry in particular need to be more aggressive in getting farms registered as part of the NAIS.”
My comment: If the NMPF wants to locate every dairy why not ask the people who visit every dairy in the United States every day and pump their milk into tanker trucks? How badly are these dairies hidden from the NMPF.
No NAIS was needed in Britain, nor will it be needed in the United States.
The government can find any farm they want within 90 minutes. If the USDA is alert and does their job, the billions of dollars projected to ID 9 billion U.S. critters will be a major waste of tax money and the most complicated boondoggle the USDA has every contrived.
My suggestion: To prevent foot-and-mouth disease, do not have your farm near a government foot-and-mouth test vaccine lab with public footpaths crossing private farms. NAIS can not help.
For additional information, go online at, www.ellinghuysen.com/ news/articles/55359.shtml
This farm news was published in the Sept. 12, 2007 issue of Farm World, serving Indiana, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan and Tennessee. |
| 9/12/2007 |
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