Oregon Small Holders Alliance News

Please read the articles in the two alerts from FMD News. The articles are in Portuguese and Italian and can be translated into English at Bable Fish I have been very concerned that with the aquisition of two of the largest packers in the US by JBS, we’d see a push to force Brazilian beef into the US. If approved, the aquisitions would make JBS, a Brazilian company, the largest packer in the USA. Well, here it is. No wonder USDA’s FAD of the day for justifying NAIS is FMD. Of course I think we all already knew this.

This just in from FMD News.

Brazil will be carrying out a campaign over the next few months to electronically ID all cattle in the state of Santa Catarina, which is the only state in that country that OIE recognizes as disease free with out vaccination for FMD.  The Brazilian government believes they can ID every single cow, calf, steer and bull in 2 months after the tags have been delivered.

Why is this problematic for the USA? In late 2007 or early 2008 the EU banned imports of Brazilian beef due to a lack of tracability for animals from the state of Santa Catarina. The government of Italy is proposing to begin importing live cattle - yearling calves - from Brazil for fattening and slaughter. Italy will start out at 50,000 calves/year and increase that annually to a peak of 150,000 calves/year. If OIE recinds Brazil’s FMD disease free status in Santa Catarina, it will severely impact the Brazilian export market for beef and cattle. If they do it for lack of individual animal ID, that will be a huge stick that other countries can use to threaten us into fully implementing NAIS as a mandatory system.

If OIE can bring that kind of force to bear in order to force Brazil into EID of cattle, when in the past Brazil claimed that it was prohibitivly expensive, they can do it to us as well in the USA. The threat of loosing our disease free status would be too much for large producers and exporters to bear and the push for full mandatory NAIS will be on.

If Brazil goes ahead with EID for cattle in Santa Catarina and retains their disease free satus for FMD, they may well push for the USA to allow imports of fresh/frozen beef or even live cattle. This is made more likely by the purchase by JBS - a Brazilian company - of two of the largest packers in the USA. If approved, the two purchases will make JBS the largest packer in the USA, and there will be a lot of incentive for them to lobby USDA to allow imports of Brazilian beef.

This will be even more likely if USDA finalizes and adopts a proposed rule to declare the Patagonian region of Argentina FMD free allowing imports of fresh/frozen Argentinian beef which in turn could very well set a precedent for allowing Brazilian beef into the USA.

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Article summary from FMD News -

COUNTRY & DATE: Brazil. 26-Mar-08

TYPE:  Unofficial

ISSUE:  FMD control program.

SUMMARY:  The regional coordinator of the project for identification of cattle, reported that Santa Catarina cattle will be identified using individual tags, in order to allow the application of a trace-back system. He explained that if such a system is not put in place, Santa Catarina may be soon loosing its OIE-recognized status of FMD-free without vaccination.

FULL TEXT: http://www.adjorisc.com.br/jornais/correiodonorte/noticias/index.phtml?id_conteudo=131564&id_secao=6
(Portuguese)
You can translate the article from the Portuguese with Bablefish from Altavista. The translation is a bit odd, but you can get the gist of it.

http://www.bablefish.altavista.com

and adds a new twist to movement tracking

by Joanne Rigutto

In 2007 the state of Illinois began to require premises registration as a condition of certain activities with livestock and poultry. The first activity, 4H participation at the state fair, found some complying, some refusing, and one ingenious 4H participant using the state fairground’s premises ID number (PIN) instead of registering the property where the calf was kept. The rules stated clearly that a PIN was required, although I’m not sure that it specified which PIN, but the kid, her family and the calf were escorted off the fairgrounds by security just prior to the last class, which many said she probably would have won.Disregarding the outcry from 4H families, IDOA has decided to expand the PIN requirements for 2008 to all 4H shows, FFA shows, and all county fairs in addition to the state fair. The PIN requirement will also apply to private individuals showing livestock and/or poultry at the state and county fairs irregardless of whether they are Illinois residents or not. The state and respective counties are well within their rights to require premises registration as a condition of participation in a state or county opperated event, however, it will remain to be seen how many people decide to participate in livestock exhibitions at those events this year. I have always maintained that pushing a program like NAIS on people against their will could have deliterious effects on the levels of participation.Lets take a look at the horse industry. While recreational horse owners are the largest single segment of the horse owning population, people who show do make up a significant segment of the industry, and those small hobby owners who like to show as an avocation probably make up the biggest portion of individuals with show horse ownership. To get an idea of how many shows are held on any given weekend during the show season in a given area, all one has to do is pick up any of the local horse magazines or newspapers, many if not most of which are free. Multiply each class at any listed show by 5-10 and you begin to get an idea of the sheer volume of horses moving around from home to show and back again. And larger regional shows have many more participants than that. A few other quick calculations can give you an idea of just how much money is spent each weekend to go to and participate in these shows. Money is spent on things like fuel, food, lodging, horse gear and materials specific to showing, etc. During the height of the show season hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent across any given state each weekend due soely to horse shows. The more you discourage that, by requiring premise registration to show, the less money will be spent in the state. Speaking as a former professional horse show photographer, and someone who has participated in and helped out at shows, I can tell you from personal experience that showing is a lot of work and can be very expensive even at a relatively small show. For those people who are not professional horse people, the only reward at the end of the day is a $2 ribbon and a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction.

by Joanne Rigutto 

Recently smallholders in the UK were accused of being a risk to agriculture by the National Farmers Union (NFU) president, Peter Kendall. Mr. Kendall accused smallholders, some of which are hobby farmers and people keeping livestock and poultry as a lifestyle choice, of being a ‘back door’ for disease to enter into the livestock population of the UK, thus endangering commercial producers.

According to articles in the Times Online and Country Smallholding, the NFU also blames smallholders for the second wave of FMD in England in 2007, which is completely ludicrous.

 In looking at the 2007 FMD outbreak, some important points about the second half of the outbeak need to be kept in mind -

• DEFRA lifted the movement ban way sooner than it should have in the first half of the outbreak. OIE recomends a wait of 3 months after the last infected location is contained, DEFRA waited 3 weeks or less. Unfortunately, movement restrictions need to stay in place for the prescribed ammount of time if vaccination is prohibited. If those restrictions are lifted prematurely, we can see a lenghtening of the outbreak as well as spread, and because of that, the total movement restrictions stay in place longer than they should have had the original guidelines been observed and the disease stamped out.

• This premature lifting of the movement restrictions was not for the bennefit of the smallholders but for the bennefit of the commercial farms, which understandabley needed to start moving animals to market. The subsequent movement restrictions had disasterous effects on farms during the second half of the outbreak. The length of time those restrictions had to stay in place underline the need to get animals moving as soon as possible in a situation like a disease outbreak, especially one happening at that particular time of year. This was especially true of the farms raising light lambs. The timing of movement to slaughter is critical with this type of livestock. Unfortunately, the movement restrictions were lifted prematurely. This resulted in the total outbreak lasting longer than it might have.

• Less than 1 week after the movement restrictions were innitially relaxed there was another outbreak which turned out to be the first outbreak of the second wave of FMD. It’s unclear as to whether this outbreak was caused by legal movements of animals, illegal movements of animals, mechanical vectors such as fomites, movement of infected wildlife, human movements which could have inadvertently transported the virus or was an infected farm that was not detected until several days after the movement restrictions were relaxed. It is important to note that due to the weakened strain involved in the 2007 outbreak, symptoms in many animals were much less severe than those in the 2001-2002 outbreak. In some cases lesions weren’t even detected until almost healed.

• In a situation like an FMD outbreak, smallholders could actually serve as sentinals as many do have closer contact with their animals and have that contact more often, than many larger producers. Well educated smallholders may be better positioned to detect health problems and obtain veterinary care because of the increased direct contact with their animals, especially in a situation in which livestock owners and managers are being advised to check their animals once and even twice a day. Due to this heightened level of contact with and perhaps handling by humans, the livestock may be less stressed and easier to check for telltale signs of disease than animals not acustomed to human contact.

So, to blame smallholders for disease outbeaks is the height of irresponsible behavior on the part of an agriculture official and ammounts to unfounded scapegoating.

The reality of modern agriculture, be it in the UK, the USA, or anywhere else on the planet, is that large scale and small scale agriculture are both necessary to the health of society and animal agriculture. By and large, it’s the large scale producers who feed the bulk of the urban populations, especially in the industrialized countries. But it’s the small scale animal owners and small commercial producers who often are usually the sole individuals responsible for preserving heritage breeds of livestock and poultry - the gene pool from which the high production commercial breeds sprang, and from which they still draw fresh genes.

Lets face it, the small holders aren’t suited to large scale production, but the large commercial producers do not have the financial resources to preserve the genetic heritage of livestock and poultry breeds that have been around in some cases for hundreds of years and who posess adaptations to a wide variety of environments and production systems.

In an age when close to 1 livestock or poultry breed becomes extinct each month somewhere in the world, smallholders are needed more than ever….

Articles -

Times Online

Country Smallholding

Both publications allow comment, Times Online through a comment box and Country Smallholder through an online forum.

To learn more about livestock, farming and disease issues in the UK and elsewhere in Europe please visit Mary Chritchley’s excellent website Warmwell

I love TheHorse.com I subscribe to their e-newsletter and find the articles interesting. Today, I read with interest an article in the current newsletter for Horse Welfare and Industry News about the efforts of the government of North Carolina to provide hay to needy livestock owners in that state. What was not included in the article is the fact that NC requires livestock owners to be registered with the state’s premises registration database in order to be elligable to purchase hay through the relief program. The hay is not subsidised, that is, people purchase the hay at cost, that is, the state charges what it paid for the hay plus hauling and handling expenses. So the participants aren’t getting a subsidy of any kind.

 What I find reprehensible, is that the state is using this relief program to coerce livestock owners, some who may be desperate for forage for their animals, to participate in a program - NAIS - which is supposedly ‘voluntary’. I don’t know about anyone else, but where I grew up, voluntary meant that you did something of your own free will. If you had to so something, like participate in NAIS, in order to gain something, then what you were required to participate in became mandatory, at least for that something you wished to gain. Voluntary means you can do it or not, mandatory means you have to do it. Like mandatory car insurance. If you only drive your car on your own property, or some other private property, then a license, insurance, tags, etc. are voluntary. You can get them or not as you choose. However, if you want to drive that car on the public roads, then you have to be licensed, have plates, tags, insurance, etc. That’s mandatory….

 Here is the letter I sent to The Horse.com staff, I sent it to several of them. Send one or more letters of your own if you can…..

To whom it may concern,

I enjoy receiving and reading your newsletters. In the current edition of the Welfare and Industry News, which I received today, February 7 2008, I read, with interest the article about the North Carolina hay relief effort - The Horse article on NC hay relief

I’m assuming that the author of the article, who I assume also works for your publication, was unaware that the state of North Carolina requires that individuals purchasing the hay also be registered with North Carolina’s premises registration database for the National Animal ID System. While I applaud the state of North Carolina in it’s efforts to help its citizens in times of need, I find it reprehensible that the North Carolina government would use the bait of hay to feed the livestock of distressed farmers and private livestock owners to ‘encourage’ them to sign up for a ‘voluntary’ federal program that is being implemented by the state government.

If any of your reporters would be interested in following up on this aspect of the North Carolina hay relief effort I would be more than happy to talk to them and/or to put them in touch with individuals in North Carolina directly affected by the state’s actions.

Sincerely,

Joanne Rigutto

Oregon Small Holders Alliance (OSHA)

Head - OSHA NAIS Working Group

Mulino, Oregon

osha.nais.wg@jrigutto.com

In light of the last post on Brazil and the EU’s tracability issues, Brazil has compiled a list of 600 farms that it says are safe - that is free from diseases like Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) - and which the EU should accept beef from. Apparently there were mistakes in the former list of 2,600 farms that the Brazilian government thought were OK.  Hmmm, 2,600 vs. 600. Pretty big ‘Oops’.

 Radio Netherlands Article

The EU want’s a tracability system that is equivalent to their own to be implemented in Brazil because Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) is present in that country in all but one state - Santa Catarina. Everywhere in Brazil FMD is controlled by vaccination, except for the state of Santa Catarina which is disease free without vaccination. The EU is rightfully concerned that there is the potential for cattle and/or beef contaminated with FMD to be smuggled out of other states in Brazil and into Santa Catarina for export to vulnerable countries like the EU member nations which do not allow vaccination against FMD and therefore have populations of succeptable livestock that are immunologically naive to the virus. In the event of an outbreak, as we have seen in the past with the UK in 2001-2002 and 2007 outbreaks, and the 2007 outbreak in Cyprus, the only remedy for dealing with FMD, in countries where vaccination is not an option, is to kill infected and potentially exposed animals and to stop the movement of all succeptible animals everywhere in the country. Because the EU member nations have chosen to be FMD free without vaccination, they are extremely vulnerable to the intrusion of the virus into their territories.

The increase of globalization and international trade make the transmission of disease from one country to another more and more common, and governments and international organizations (both intergovenmental and NGOs) are dead set on implementing tracability systems in livestock, hoping that these systems will enable them to contain diseases that they know they can’t keep out of their territories.

Now, however, some countries are saying that tracability systems required by an importing country are in some cases not the silver bullet that proponents claim they are, and that they are expensive and can even be considered barriers to trade and are being required as a thinly veiled attempt to protect domestic producers from competition from foreign producers. Brazil has stated that they will reserve the right to contest the EU’s tracability requirements before the WTO. If this were to happen and the WTO were to rule in Brazil’s favor it might make things very interesting for those of us who are against mandatory tracability systems such as the NAIS.

Article sources and summaries from - FMD News

In Brazil, Anger Over European Ban of Beef Imports

NY Times

by Andrew Downie

2-5-2008

SUMMARY: A decision by the European Union to ban Brazilian beef imports is “unjustifiable and arbitrary” and could result in shortages and higher prices for European consumers, officials and agricultural specialists say. Concerned that the meat could pose health risks, the Europeans banned all Brazilian beef imports last week. European nations are still alert to fears over mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease, and contend that Brazil, the world’s largest beef exporter, does not have adequate health and traceability systems in place. Brazilian ranchers denied that and proposed that imports be allowed from 2,600 holdings where they said procedures were adequate. The Europeans rejected that compromise and imposed a blanket ban. A delegation is to visit Brazil later this month to further review Brazilian

Brazil could file a complaint with WTO over EU ban on meat imports

From the AP

2-5-2008

SUMMARY: Brazil on Tuesday sharply criticized the European Union`s decision to temporarily ban Brazilian beef imports and warned it could file a complaint with the World Trade Organization. The criticism and warning are contained in a letter delivered Tuesday to the WTO`s General Council by Clodoaldo Hugueney, Brazil`s ambassador to that body. «The Brazilian government regrets the decision of the European Commission to temporarily suspend exports of beef to the European market,» Hugueney said in his letter. «The decision is, in our view, unjustified, arbitrary and disproportionate.» He hinted that the decision was taken to serve the interests of European producers. He said he hoped Brazilian and European authorities would work out some kind of agreement that would end the band, but added: «We reserve, however, our right to defend our interests in the SPS Committee (that monitors health and food safety standards) and in other bodies of the World Trade Organization.»