According to a senior member of Senate Agriculture Committee, more funding is being made for Electronic Identification Tags. Rusty Halvorson has more details.
Senator John Hoeven, Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, announced that the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (or APHIS) will provide an additional 3 million electronic identification (EID) tags for U.S ranchers.
John Hoeven, Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, announced that the
This comes after Hoeven pressed APHIS officials to ensure that ranchers have the resources necessary to comply with a new EID tag mandate that went into effect on November 5th.
The APHIS rule requires “official identification” on certain cattle and bison moved across state lines for the purpose of animal disease traceability and expanded the requirements for ear tags used as official identification. For animals tagged after the rule’s effective date, the ear tags “must be readable both visually and electronically.”
Hoeven said, “Our ranchers are already facing challenges from weather and high input costs, the last thing they need are additional costs from USDA mandates.”
Hoeven included $10 million in the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2025 Agriculture Appropriations Bill to explicitly fund the new APHIS tag requirement.