Feds won’t require data on cows’ age

WASHINGTON – A livestock tracking system planned by the federal government will not include the age of animals despite the key role age has played in mad cow disease investigations.

U.S. Agriculture Department officials say they don’t want to overburden ranchers and can track most birth dates.

Critics say the omission could make the system worthless.

“So what’s the point of having this animal ID system? This is one fact you actually really need to know when it comes to mad cow,” Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives at Consumers Union, said Monday.

The department promised to create the tracking system after the nation’s first case of mad cow disease two years ago and already has spent $84 million on it. Earlier this month, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns promised it would be in place by 2009.

The system also applies to pigs and chickens and to many other diseases. But the controversy is about mad cow disease, medically known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE.

“When you’re dealing with contagious diseases such as foot-and-mouth disease or exotic Newcastle disease, age really isn’t all that important,” department spokeswoman Dore Mobley said. “It is important when you’re talking about BSE to estimate when an animal may have become infected.”

The goal is to allow authorities, within 48 hours after a disease has been discovered, to pinpoint a single animal’s movements. Industry groups are collecting and keeping the data, which the government intends to tap when an outbreak occurs.

Mad cow disease doesn’t spread like the flu; scientists say it spreads only when cattle eat feed containing diseased cattle tissue. Ground-up cattle remains once were commonly added to cattle feed as protein, but the government essentially halted the practice nine years ago.

The age of infected cattle may indicate whether the safeguard is working. So far, infected cattle in the United States appear to have been born before the feed restrictions took effect.

However, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, pointed out, investigators still don’t know the exact age of the Alabama cow that was identified last month in the third U.S. case of mad cow disease. Experts relied on the Alabama cow’s teeth to determine it probably was 10 years old.