[Jacob-list] tags and tracking

[Neal and Louise Grose]

A couple of points:

1)
 Let me clarify that photos or drawings of animals are considered legal
identification of Holsteins ONLY if the picture is cross-referenced to a
permanent identification number and this information is recorded by the
breed association. My comments on coloration pretained to legal
identification ONLY and were based on a court case involving stolen animals.
This has nothing to do with government market requirements.

 A Holstein cow may well have the following:
*An identifying photo
*A "herd management" number
*A permanent registration number recognized by the National Association of
Animal Breeders as well as international breed organizations
*A unique USDA-DHIA metal tag
*A USDA brucellosis metal tag
All of this works only as well as the effort that is made to keep track of
it all.

2)
 I also heard about the calves that were to be slaughtered for safety sake.
The problem is that everyone that works with this problem assumes that the
general public has a seven second attention span.
Almost everything that is being done is so that the general public will get
the impression, deservedly or not, that the government is DOING SOMETHING.
a) BSE is caused by prions: malformed, self replicating proteins.
b) Proteins cannot normally cross the intestine and get into the blood
stream, only the amino acid building blocks for proteins.
c) Prions cannot cross the blood/brain barrier.
d)Transmission of BSE is thought to occur directly from the gut to the brain
via the vagus nerve.
e) Blood is considered a very low risk transmitter for BSE.
f) Those "products" of blood (milk and fetal tissues) have "for all
practical purposes"  NO chance of being infectious.

Neal

----- Original Message -----
From: "Linda Bjarkman" <patchworkfibers at alltel.net>
To: <nlgrose at yadtel.net>; <jacob-list at jacobsheep.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 06, 2004 6:08 PM
Subject: Re: [Jacob-list] tags and tracking


The TV news stated that quite a number of cattle were to be butchered to
insure that
the infected cow's calf would be eliminated as they weren't sure which was
her calf.
 A SC newspaper earlier reported that there was an effort going on to locate
the
infected cow's calf "even though transmission from cow to calf was
unlikely."
I'm sure I'm not getting the whole scoop on this, but something's not right
with
those reports.

I thought that the requirement for sheep to be tagged from point of origin
went into
effect back around 2001.  If you had sheep on your farm in 2001 and they
left, they
had to have your tags if they were not already tagged from the previous
owner.

I read the following on the Goats list and wondered if anyone else has heard
of this

>We received notice that under the Volunteer Scrapie Program, we will now
>have to have our private vet come out and do skin scrapings on the herd
>and send a letter to the state. In my case, this could be cost-prohibitive
>of remaining on the program--is there anyone else that feels this way?
>Also, I received another notice today about lower-status "rams" being
>allowed in without affecting herd status under certain circumstances.
>There is an inference in the notice that some herds have been allowed to
>purchase "rams" not on the program without losing status--Does anyone know
>anything about this?

Linda