Betty Jo Gigot, Editor and Publisher

One of the best parts of my job remains getting to visit with so many segments of the industry. It’s a real education. A comment that James Herring at Friona made stuck in my mind. He said that the American public does not care about process. “Nobody cares where their Coke is made. They just want it to be the same every time.” Works for me.

At our house we’ve always bought automobiles that are “made in America.” But as my husband Dean always reminds me, that “American” car is built almost entirely of parts made in other countries and shipped to the states for assembly.

My response to the COOL issue has always been to ask where the shirt on your back came from. We all would like to buy “Made in the USA” products but the supply just isn’t there. I was talking to a guy one time about just that topic and I whipped my leather, fringed, pigskin coat open. The label said, “Made in Slovenia.” Certainly surprised me.

The point, of course, is that transportation and communication trump any attempt to turn back the clock. To think differently is to try to turn back a clock that has been ticking for too many years.

The National Animal Identification System proposal that the U.S. Department of Agriculture published recently establishes a timetable for implementation. Though slow, it seems to make sense to me. However, the provision that information be developed and kept by the U.S. Government causes me a lot of concern. I certainly have respect for the government – my dad worked for the Soil Conservation Service for thirtysome years and my first husband retired from the U.S. Forest Service – but, it seems to me, that they have enough trouble keeping track of people, much less cattle. There are any number of private companies that have spent the last 20 years developing ID systems that fit industry specs very well. As one who made her living writing and testing computer programs, I think implementing programs that have been used and debugged are far superior to a government bureaucracy developing its own.

I also have concerns about privacy, preferring a company represented by people I know and trust rather than someone in Washington, D.C.

We have used RFID tags on our herd for six years and developed a method to source and age verify most of the cattle we background. As several people told me recently, it really isn’t that big a deal; it’s mostly a matter of common sense. If we remember that the reason we are individually identifying our animals is in case of a disease outbreak, and to meet future export age requirements, it is very simple on the face of it. For those of us who also want to use our information to make management decisions, private firms make a great deal more sense.

This issue adds two more writers to our arsenal. Leann Saunders is an old friend who brings loads of information on the animal identification issue. Bryan McMurry is the beef brand manager for Cargill Animal Nutrition and is a bit nervous about our printing a story he wrote just for fun. Let me know what you think of his “Know Who Your Friends Are.” There isn’t any doubt about the moral of the story.