Mad cow begets new breed of animal tracker

By Matt McKinney
Star Tribune

Ted Radintz doesn't always know where your cow came from, but someday, he might.

His new job at the state Department of Agriculture as coordinator of the National Animal Identification System drops him into the middle of a national effort to tag each and every animal in the food chain with some kind of unique number. Why do that, you ask?

About 25 million cattle are slaughtered in the United States every year. The 2003 outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- or mad cow disease -- underscored just how difficult it can be to trace the history of a sickened animal.

That experience gave birth to the National Animal Identification System, allowing health experts to learn the entire history of any animal within 48 hours. Launched in 2004, it's a voluntary program that so far has drawn registrations from slightly more than one-sixth of Minnesota's farmers.

The animals covered include cattle, swine, sheep, poultry, bison, llamas, alpacas, horses, deer, elk and goats. The methods to tag them vary from animal to animal and include DNA, retinal scans, ear tags and even radio frequency tags the size of a kernel of rice that could be slipped under the animal's skin.

Radintz, a cattle farmer from Maple Grove, has been given expanded responsibilities to promote the program among Minnesota farmers. He talked to the Star Tribune on Friday about his new job.

Q How does the system work right now?

A Currently, we rely a lot on paper records. If the farmer has good records of where all of the animals came from, that would be one way. It's just a paper trail, and the trail is only as good as the records that were kept.

Q What would each animal get, a tattoo or a tag?

A It's going to depend on species. Each species nationally has a working group to identify the best ways to identify each animal. If we use ear tags, for example, in cattle, sheep and in some cases pigs, that might work out great. But ear tags aren't going to work so good for poultry.

Q Who will pay for it?

A To register your premises, that's free. Some of the ID applications, there are going to be small costs. More than likely those costs, like in cattle for example, if they use a radio frequency ID tag, that costs about $2 per head, so that cost will be borne by the producer. As time goes on, I think those ear tags will go down in price.

Q What sort of buy-in have you had from farmers so far?

A So far in Minnesota we have over 11,000 premises identified. ... We roughly feel that there are 63,000 premises in Minnesota that we need to identify.

Q Might this someday lead to a food identification system in which consumers could pick up a steak at the supermarket and learn from a barcode or number on it where the meat came from, how it was raised, how old the animal was, etc?

A I think that the animal ID system might not provide the consumers that, but I think the ID system is the building block for other marketing programs to be developed. So if there is a food producer that wants to sell meat, or beef that has certain claims, say natural fed, they could use the national animal ID system to track which animals qualify for their programs and which ones don't.

Q What's the timeline for this program?

A The [U.S. Department of Agriculture] guidelines have been they would love to have 100 percent of livestock premises identified by 2009.

For more information, see National Animal Identification System at the state Board of Animal Health: www.bah.state.mn.us