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Anonymous
I have a few comments I would like to get off my chest as well as pose some questions for the group , I just hope I can get into word form what I am thinking. I do not have a problem with a national ID system , maybe we should have had one years ago. Seems like the purebreed assoc. can tell you who owns a cow where the cow is and the lineage of the cow. This is for the cows, bulls and semen sold......Will this be voluntay, mandatory ? Like previuosly stated there are plenty of folks that do not even have head gates or squeeze chutes.......The rope and fence post crowd.I grew up that way only took a broken arm to know there was a better way......If this is mandatory I guess we are looking at an unfunded mandate....The producer will have to burden the cost... Also all the tracking in the world will not solve the problem if you let this same scenerio play out....The downer cow was tested because it was "suspect" so why then was the meat comingled and let enter the food chain.....could not this carcas been put in cold storage or frozen till tests results came back ? (greedy processor ?) Quite frankly I look to the future cautiously ...I see this as possibly a way for packers to squeeze us even harder....Remember those guys that said COOL was too expensive to implement too cumbersome....they were none to happy with the unprecidented prices paid to cattlemen of late....Now I am not saying that it is because of them that this cow entered the food chain when it should of went to a rendering plant. I just think when the smoke settles...we will be burdened with additional costs , lower prices, smaller profits....some smaller and older family producers will pack it up....the retail case in grocery stores will never reflect the drop in price...McDonalds and Outback will not lower prices.....and the packers will play this for all they can to discredit cattle producers, rob us of our independence and call for the integration of the cattle business under the quise of food safety.......Thats my two cents worth.....please excuse the spelling and sentenance structure....
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