Officials say a disease might be killing an invasive species of fish in Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. The GLRC’s David Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
Officials say a disease might be killing an invasive species of fish in Lake
Ontario and the St. Lawrence River. The GLRC’s David Sommerstein
reports.
Where the lake and the river meet, people have been finding dead round
gobies.
“Dozens in some cases, hundreds of dead gobies that have been washing up on shores.”
Steve Litwiler is with New York’s Department of Environmental
Conservation. He says a change in water temperature or a poison could
cause the die-off, but initial sampling suggests some kind of disease.
“Is it a disease that could potentially affect other fish? Fortunately right
now the only fish that are dying appear to be the round gobies.”
If only the round gobies die, this could be a good news story. Round gobies
hitched a ride from Europe in the ballast of foreign freighters. They’ve
displaced native species across the Great Lakes by breeding faster and eating
other fishes’ eggs and young.
The nuclear industry is dealing with criticism over spills of a chemical called tritium. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee reports:
Transcript
The nuclear industry is dealing with criticism over spills of a chemical
called tritium. The GLRC’s Shawn Allee reports:
Federal regulators don’t require nuclear power plants to report what’s
considered minor tritium spills to the public. That’s despite the fact
tritium can make water radioactive, but some residents in Arizona,
Illinois and New York are furious. They’ve learned about tritium
spills… sometimes years later. Now, power plants want to change
course.
The Nuclear Energy Institute’s Ralph Andersen says the industry will
report even minor tritium leaks to the public.
“It’s appreciating the common sense issue that of course, neighbors
around a nuclear power plant want to be aware of emissions from the
plant, not just hear about it later or read about it in the paper.”
Federal regulators insist the public’s safe. Nuclear watchdog groups
remain worried, though. The agreement covers only nuclear plant
operators, not places that store tritium outside power stations.
States that are looking at regional agreements to reduce air pollution could face legal challenges. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
States that are looking at regional agreements to reduce air pollution could face legal challenges.
The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Some states are upset with the pace of federal efforts to address climate change. So, they’re
considering teaming up on their own. For example, New York and some other eastern states plan
to begin a trading program in 2009, aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to
global warming.
Robert Percival is an environmental law professor at the University of Maryland. He says the
regional efforts must proceed carefully.
“If the federal government fails to take action against a major problem there’s no problem letting
the states step in as long as they do so in a non-discriminatory way.”
In other words, the states can’t interfere with interstate commerce, by ruling against utilities or
other firms that produce products outside their regional collaboration. If the states do
discriminate, they’d need to get approval from Congress, and with Capitol Hill and the White
House currently on the same page on many issues, it isn’t clear federal lawmakers would back the
states.
Officials say a new outbreak of Chronic Wasting Disease
could erupt after a fence was cut at an infected hunting preserve in Wisconsin. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley
reports:
Transcript
Officials say a new outbreak of Chronic Wasting Disease could erupt after a fence was cut at an
infected hunting preserve in Wisconsin. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina
Shockley reports:
Authorities say someone intentionally cut a hole in a perimeter fence at the preserve in central
Wisconsin. They say tracks indicate deer had gone in and out of the area through the hole…
before the owner saw it and notified the Department of Natural Resources.
Alan Crossley is with the Wisconsin DNR. He says officials shot deer around the preserve to try
to limit the chance the disease would spread to wild deer.
“We have to try to assess whether any deer escaped from that shooting pen. Then we’re going to
be meeting to talk about okay, should we try to do any additional shooting of deer in a larger area
around that pen.”
Crossley says it’s now even more important to monitor deer near the preserve in the years ahead.
He says it will take time to determine how their overall efforts to combat the disease are working.
So far, CWD has been found in the wild in ten states, including Wisconsin, New York and
Illinois.
Through car sharing programs, users rent cars on an hourly basis.
(Photo courtesy of Zipcar)
There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day.
It’s commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans,
renting a car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour
is often called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment
because its users only get the car when they need the car. They usually
take buses and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big
cities on the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair
of private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd Melby
has this report:
Transcript
There’s nothing unusual about renting a car by the day. It’s
commonplace at airports nationwide, but for most Americans, renting a
car by the hour is a strange notion. Renting a car by the hour is often
called “car sharing.” Car sharing is good for the environment because its
users only get the car when they need the car. They usually take buses
and bikes to get around. Car sharing has caught on in a few big cities on
the east and west coasts. That’s largely due to the efforts of a pair of
private companies, Zipcar and Flexcar. Now, those firms are poised to
expand their operations. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Todd
Melby has this report:
For the past six months, a nonprofit called the Neighborhood Energy
Consortium has had the Minneapolis/St. Paul car sharing market to itself.
The non-profit group has raised about $450,000 to buy 12 cars. Those
energy-efficient hybrids have attracted about 140 people to join the
HourCar program. That’s Hour with an “H.”
(Sound of bus stop and rumble of passing truck)
On this Saturday morning, Mary Solac is shivering at a bus stop, waiting
for a ride to go pick up her HourCar. Despite the obvious inconvenience,
she says it’s worth it.
“You don’t have to worry about insurance. You don’t have to worry
about gas. It’s like okay, I’m paying what I’m paying and I don’t have to
worry about fixing the blasted car either.”
After a short bus ride, Solac does have to worry about more mundane car
concerns… such as scraping the ice and snow off the window.
(Sound of ice/snow scraping on the windshield)
To date, Solac’s only choice for renting a car by the hour has been
HourCar. That’s about to change.
The nation’s largest car sharing company — Zipcar of Boston — is
invading HourCar’s Minneapolis turf. Nearly 50,000 people now take
turns driving about 500 Zipcars, mostly in Boston, New York and
Washington, D.C.
Scott Griffith is the CEO of Zipcar.
“Over the last several years, we’ve really focused on those cities and getting
them past profitability, past the break even point, to prove that at the
metro market level, that we can make money in this business.”
That track record enticed a venture capital firm to invest $10 million in
Zipcar.
Another big new company is also getting an influx of cash. The nation’s
second-largest car sharing company — Flexcar of Seattle — is about half
as big as Zipcar. It too has a new investor: AOL Founder Stephen Case.
He rented a Flexcar, liked it and bought the company.
In Chicago, Flexcar has paired with a local nonprofit to put 47 cars on
the street.
Zipcar, meanwhile, is also trying to get into Chicago. It wants
government agencies in the Windy City to commit to using its cars
before entering the market. The company hopes that happens sometime
this year.
Business professor Alfred Marcus at the University of Minnesota says it’s
not unusual for emerging businesses to seek government help like this.
“To get this sector going, to stimulate it, it makes sense for their to be
some public involvement, but you would hope this could take off on its
own. I think this is transitional – these public and private partnerships,
and that’s very typical when industries start.”
In Minneapolis/St. Paul, the University of Minnesota is guaranteeing
Zipcar a $1,500 per month per vehicle subsidy, but once Zipcar meets the
$1,500 minimum, that subsidy goes away. Zipcar says it expects to do
just that in three months.
At the moment, Zipcar is growing fast. It had revenues of about $15
million in 2005. CEO Griffith says it expects to double that this year, but
Alfred Marcus with the University of Minnesota says over the long-term,
Zipcar faces big hurdles.
Zipcar has only had success in large, densely-populated cities. Its target
market is young people without cars who are highly price sensitive, and
then there’s the question of where to keep the cars. They have to be
conveniently located to the people who might want to use them.
Marcus says that if these start-ups continue to grow, someday they might
be gobbled up by bigger companies.
“The ultimate aim of Flexcars or Zipcars may be to build up a fringe
business, get it going and have a rental car company buy them or have even
have a conventional automobile company by them.”
But the car-sharing company owners say they have other plans. Zipcar
boss Scott Griffith says he’s working on a 10-year plan to make Zipcar an
international company. Flexcar owner Stephen Case says he bought that
firm “to build it” and not to “flip it.”
Water diversion is an increasing threat to the Great Lakes. As communities grow so does the demand. (Photo by Brandon Bankston)
We’re continuing the series, Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our field guide through the series is Lester Graham. He says our next report looks at where the demand for water will be greatest:
Transcript
We’re continuing the series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. Our field
guide through the series is Lester Graham. He says our next report looks
at where the demand for water will be greatest.
Right around the Great Lakes is where there’s going to be more demand
for drinking water. Water officials say as cities and suburbs grow, so
does the need for water. Some towns very near the Great Lakes say they
need lake water right now, but in some cases they might not get it. The
Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Christina Shockley reports:
People who live around the Great Lakes have long used the lakes’ water
for transportation, industry, and drinking water. Most of the water we
use, gets cleaned up and goes back in the lakes.
That’s because the Great Lakes basin is like a bowl. All the water used
by communities inside that bowl returns to the lakes in the form of
groundwater, storm water runoff, and treated wastewater, but recently, thirsty
communities just outside the basin—outside that bowl—have shown an
interest in Great Lakes water.
Dave Dempsey is a Great Lakes advisor to the environmental group
“Clean Water Action.”
“We are going to be seeing all along the fringe areas of the Great Lakes
basin all the way from New York state to Minnesota, communities that
are growing and have difficulty obtaining adequate water from nearby
streams or ground water.”
Treated water from those communities won’t naturally go back to the
basin. Treated wastewater and run-off from communities outside the
Great Lakes basin goes into the Mississippi River system, or rivers in the
east and finally the Atlantic Ocean.
The Great Lakes are not renewable. Anything that’s taken away has to be
returned. For example, when nature takes water through evaporation, it
returns it in the form of rain or melted snow. When cities take it away, it
has to be returned in the form of cleaned-up wastewater to maintain that
careful balance.
Dave Dempsey says the lakes are like a big giant savings account, and
we withdraw and replace only one percent each year.
“So, if we should ever begin to take more than one percent of that
volume on an annual basis for human use or other uses, we’ll begin to
draw them down permanently, we’ll be depleting the bank account.”
Some of the citiesthat want Great Lakes water are only a few miles from
the shoreline. One of the most unique water diversion requests might come
from the City of Waukesha, in southeastern Wisconsin. The city is just 20 miles
from Lake Michigan. Waukesha is close enough to smell the lake, but it
sits outside the Great Lakes basin. Waukesha needs to find another
water source because it’s current source – wells—are contaminated with
radium.
Dan Duchniak is Waukesha’s water manager. He says due to the city’s
unique geology, it’s already using Great Lakes water. He says it taps an
underground aquifer that eventually recharges Lake Michigan.
“Water that would be going to Lake Michigan is now coming from Lake
Michigan…. our aquifer is not contributing to the Great Lakes any more,
it’s pulling away from the Great Lakes.”
Officials from the eight Great Lakes states and Ontario and Quebec
recently approved a set of rules that will ultimately decide who can use
Great Lakes water. The new rules will allow Waukesha—and some
other communities just outside the basin—to request Great Lakes water,
and drafters say Waukesha will get “extra credit” if it can prove it’s
using Lake Michigan water now.
Environmentalists are still concerned that water taken from the Lakes be
returned directly to the Lakes, but some say even that could be harmful.
Art Brooks is a Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of
Wisconsin- Milwaukee. He says the water we put back still carries some
bi-products of human waste.
“No treatment plant gets 100 percent of the nutrients out of the water,
and domestic sewage has high concentrations of ammonia and
phosphates. Returning that directly to the lake could enhance the growth
of algae in the lake.”
That pollution could contribute to a growing problem of dead zones in
some areas of the Great Lakes. Brooks and environmentalists concede
that just one or two diversions would not harm the Great Lakes, but they
say one diversion could open the floodgates to several other requests, and
letting a lot of cities tap Great Lakes water could be damaging.
Derek Sheer of the environmental group “Clean Wisconsin” says some
out-of-basin communities have already been allowed to tap Great Lakes
water under the old rules.
“The area just outside of Cleveland–Akron, Ohio– has a diversion
outside of the Great Lakes basin, so they’re utilizing Great Lakes water
but they’re putting it back.”
There are several communities that take Great Lakes water, but they, too,
pump it back. The new water rules still need to be ok-ed by the legislature of
each Great Lakes state, and Congress. Since the rules are considered a
baseline, environmental interests throughout the region say they’ll lobby
for even stricter rules on diversions.
A freighter leaving the Duluth harbor in Minnesota. (Photo courtesy of EPA)
A ship in the Duluth–Superior harbor in Duluth, Minnesota. The St. Lawrence Seaway made it possible for the Duluth–Superior harbor to exist. (Photo courtesy of EPA)
One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes identified by many of the experts we surveyed
is dredging channels deeper and wider for larger ocean-going ships. In the 1950s, engineers
carved a shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence
River. The St. Lawrence Seaway was to make ports in cities such as Chicago and Duluth main
players in global commerce. Today, the Seaway operates at less than half its capacity.
That’s because only five percent of the world’s cargo fleet can fit through its locks and
channels. For decades, the shipping industry has wanted to make them bigger. David
Sommerstein reports:
Transcript
We’re continuing our series Ten Threats to the Great Lakes with a look at the idea of
letting bigger ships into the lakes. Lester Graham is our guide through the series.
One of the Ten Threats to the Great Lakes identified by many of the experts we surveyed
is dredging channels deeper and wider for larger ocean-going ships. In the 1950s, engineers
carved a shipping channel from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes via the St. Lawrence
River. The St. Lawrence Seaway was to make ports in cities such as Chicago and Duluth main
players in global commerce. Today, the Seaway operates at less than half its capacity.
That’s because only five percent of the world’s cargo fleet can fit through its locks and
channels. For decades, the shipping industry has wanted to make them bigger. David
Sommerstein reports:
(Sound of rumbling noise of front-loaders)
The port of Ogdensburg sits on the St. Lawrence River in northern New York State.
When the Seaway was built, local residents were promised an economic boom. Today
what Ogdensburg mostly gets is road salt.
(Sound of crashing cargo)
Road salt and a white mineral called Wallastonite – the Dutch use it to make ceramic tile.
Front-loaders push around mountains of the stuff. In all, the port of Ogdensburg
welcomes six freighters a year and employs just six people.
Other Great Lakes ports are much bigger, but the story is similar. They handle low-value
bulk goods – grain, ore, coal – plus higher value steel. But few sexy electronic goods
from Japan come through the Seaway, or the gijillion of knick-knacks from China or
South Korea.
James Oberstar is a Congressman from Duluth. He says there’s a reason why. A
dastardly coincidence doomed the Seaway.
“Just as the Seaway was under construction, Malcolm McLean, a shipping genius, hit on
the idea of moving goods in containers.”
Containers that fit right on trains and trucks. The problem was the ships that carry those
containers were already too big for the Seaway’s locks and channels.
“That idea of container shipping gave a huge boost of energy to the East Coast, Gulf
Coast, and West Coast ports, and to the railroads.”
Leaving Great Lakes ports behind ever since the regional shipping industry has wanted to
make the Seaway bigger.
The latest effort came in 2002, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers studied the
economic benefits of expansion. The study said squeezing container ships through the
Seaway would bring a billion and a half dollars a year to ports like Chicago, Toledo, and
Duluth. But if you build it, would they come?
“Highly doubtful that container ships would come in. Highly doubtful.”
John Taylor is a transportation expert at Grand Valley State University in Michigan.
He’s studied Seaway traffic patterns extensively. He says there would have to be “a sea
change” in global commerce.
“Rail is too competitive, too strong moving containers from the coast in and out say from
Montreal and Halifax and into Chicago and Detroit and so on, too cost-effective for it to
make sense for a ship to bring those same containers all the way to Chicago.”
The expansion study sparked a flurry of opposition across the Great Lakes. It failed to
mention the cost of replumbing the Seaway — an estimated 10 to 15 billion dollars. It
didn’t factor in invasive species that show up in foreign ships’ ballasts. Invasives already
cost the economy 5 billion dollars a year, and environmentalists said it glossed over the
ecological devastation of dredging and blasting a deeper channel.
Even the shipping industry has begun to distance itself from expansion. Steve Fisher
directs the American Great Lakes Ports Association.
“There was quite a bit of opposition expressed through the region, and in light of that
opposition we took stock of just how much and how strongly we felt on the issue and
quite frankly there just wasn’t a strong enough interest.”
Most experts now believe expansion won’t happen for at least another generation.
Environmentalists and other critics hope it won’t happen at all.
So instead, the Seaway is changing its tactics. Richard Corfe runs Canada’s side of the
waterway. He says the vast majority of Seaway traffic is actually between Great Lakes
ports, not overseas. So, the Seaway’s focus now is to lure more North American shippers
to use the locks and channels.
“Our efforts have to be towards maximizing the use of what we have now for the benefit
of both countries, the economic, environmental, and social benefit.”
Today, trucks and trains haul most goods from coastal ports to Great Lakes cities.
Shippers want to steal some of that cargo, take it off the roads and rails, and put it on
seaway ships headed for Great Lakes ports.
Wildlife officials are working to stop the spread of Chronic Wasting Disease. The disease is contagious among deer and elk and attacks the brains of infected animals. Officials are trying to keep deer and elk hunters from driving carcasses across state lines. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports:
Transcript
Wildlife officials are working to stop the spread of Chronic Wasting disease.
The disease is contagious among deer and elk and attacks the brains of infected
animals. Officials are trying to keep deer and elk hunters from driving carcasses
across state lines. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Brian Bull reports:
So far chronic wasting disease, or CWD, has been found in wild deer in Wisconsin,
Illinois, and New York. Thomas Courchaine hopes to keep it that way.
He’s with the Michigan Department of Natural Resources. He says hunters
returning from neighboring states often bring in whole deer carcasses for meat
processing or taxidermy. Courchaine says by law people can only bring in de-boned meat, antlers
or hides:
“We ran into a problem last year, a lot of Wisconsin folks bringing deer up to be processed into
Michigan. And this is a Michigan law, it’s in our digest, but if a person hunts in Wisconsin there’s
not a good way for him to realize it’s against the law unless he takes the time and effort to call
people in Michigan.”
Courchaine says violators could pay up to 500 dollars and spend up to 90 days in jail. CWD has
not yet been found to be contagious to humans, but officials warn against eating infected meat.
A bridge for a river... this portion of the Erie Canal crossed the Genesee River via an aqueduct in Rochester, NY. This photo was taken around 1914. (From the collection of the Rochester Public Library Local History Division)
Man-made canals allowed non-native species to swim into the Great Lakes. Some of them wreaked havoc on fish and habitat in the lakes. (Photo by Lester Graham)
One of the earliest invaders of the Great Lakes, sea lampreys heavily damaged commercial fisheries upon their arrival. (Photo courtesy of the Great Lakes Fishery Commission)
The Ten Threats to the Great Lakes” is looking first at alien invasive species. There are more than 160 non-native species in the Great Lakes basin. If they do environmental or economic harm, they’re called invasive species. There are estimates that invasive species cost the region billions of dollars a year. Different species got here different ways. David Sommerstein tells us how some of the region’s earliest invaders got into the Lakes:
Transcript
We’re bringing you an extensive series on Ten Threats to the Great Lakes. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Lester Graham is guiding us through the reports:
“The Ten Threats to the Great Lakes” is looking first at alien invasive species. There are more than 160 non-native species in the Great Lakes basin. If they do environmental or economic harm, they’re called invasive species. There are estimates that invasive species cost the region billions of dollars a year. Different species got here different ways. David Sommerstein tells us how some of the region’s earliest invaders got into the Lakes:
If the history of invasive species were a movie, it would open like this:
(Sound of banjo)
It’s 1825. Politicians have just ridden the first ship across the newly dug Erie Canal from Buffalo to New York.
(Sound of “The Erie Canal”)
“I’ve got an old mule, and her name is Sal. Fifteen miles on the Erie Canal…”
Chuck O’Neill is an invasive species expert with New York Sea Grant.
“At the canal’s formal opening, Governor DeWitt Clinton dumped a cask of Lake Erie water; he dumped that water into New York Harbor.”
Meanwhile, in Buffalo, a cask of Hudson River water was triumphantly poured into Lake Erie.
“In a movie, that would be the flashback with the impending doom-type music in the background.”
(Sound of ominous music)
It was an engineering and economic milestone, but a danger lurked. For the first time since glaciers carved the landscape twelve thousand years ago, water from the Hudson and water from the Great Lakes mixed.
(Sound of “Dragnet” theme)
Enter the villain: the sea lamprey. It’s a slimy, snake-like parasite in the Atlantic Ocean. It sucks the blood of host fish.
Within a decade after the Erie Canal and its network of feeders opened, the sea lamprey uses the waterways to swim into Lake Ontario. By the 1920’s and 30’s, it squirms into the upper Lakes, bypassing Niagara Falls through the Welland Canal.
What happens next is among the most notorious examples of damage done by an invasive species in the Great Lakes. By the 1950’s, the sea lamprey devastates Lake trout populations in Lake Superior. Mark Gaden is with the Great Lakes Fishery Commission.
“They changed a way of life in the Great Lakes basin, the lampreys. They preyed directly on fish, they drove commercial fisheries out of business, the communities in the areas that were built around the fisheries were impacted severely.”
The sea lamprey wasn’t the only invader that used the canals. Canal barges carried stowaway plants and animals in their hulls and ballast. In the mid-1800’s, the European faucet snail clogged water intakes across the region. The European pea clam, purple loosestrife, marsh foxtail, flowering rush – all used the canal system to enter the Great Lakes.
Chuck O’Neill says the spread of invasive species also tells the tale of human transportation.
“If you look at a map, you can pretty much say there was some kind of a right-of-way – railroad, canal, stageline – that was in those areas just by the vegetation patterns.”
Almost one hundred invasive species came to the Great Lakes this way before 1960. O’Neill says every new arrival had a cascading effect.
“Each time you add in to an ecosystem another organism that can out-compete the native organisms that evolved there, you’re gradually making that ecosystem more and more artificial, less and less stable, much more likely to be invaded by the next invader that comes along.”
(Sound of “Dragnet” theme)
The next one in the Great Lakes just might be the Asian Carp. It’s swimming up the Illinois River, headed toward Lake Michigan. Cameron Davis directs the Alliance for the Great Lakes.
“If this thing gets in, it can cause catastrophic damage to the Great Lakes, ‘cause it eats thirty, forty percent of its body weight in plankton every day, and plankton are the base of the food chain in the Great Lakes.”
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has installed an electric barrier in the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal that might stop the carp. But as long as the canals around the region remain open for shipping and recreation, it’s likely more invaders may hitch a ride or simply swim into the Great Lakes.
These ear tags are becoming a thing of the past as states try out high-tech identification chips. (Photo courtesy of the USDA)
The federal government is phasing in a national identification tracking system for livestock to help trace and curb threats, such as Mad Cow disease and even bio-terrorism. One state is even advancing what it calls micro-chip, injectable social security numbers for livestock. But many farmers worry that Big Brother may be moving into the barn. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports:
Transcript
The federal government is phasing in a national identification tracking system for livestock to help trace and curb threats, such as Mad Cow disease and even bio-terrorism. One state is even advancing, what it calls micro-chip, injectable social security numbers for livestock. But many farmers worry that Big Brother may be moving into the barn. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Joyce Kryszak reports:
The Gingerich Farm isn’t hard to find. Its fields are speckled with hundreds of black and white Holsteins. Dairy farmer Earl Gingerich Jr. takes us inside one of the barns for a closer look at some of his babies.
“These are a little noisy over here since we just moved ’em. Some of them tend to bellow…”
Gingerich is rather fond of the five hundred cows on his Western New York farm, and he doesn’t mind the hard work that goes along with them. Seven days a week, in good weather and bad. For him, Gingerich says it’s all about the cows.
“When you get up and you see the animals that are in the background and they’re waiting for you to take care of them and they need you, it’s like having a pet around, and taking that animal and yougrow her up to be a full-size, adult animal, you know why you’re doing it.”
So, Gingerich says anything he can do to protect his herd is a good idea. He takes part in the state’s voluntary vaccination program. Bright orange tags, each bearing a bold black number, are evidence of that. They dangle from the cows’ ears as they flick away barn flies while chewing the newest cut of hay.
(Sound of mooing)
But these tags will soon be obsolete. By 2009, the Department of Agriculture’s national animal identification program will require a standardized tracking system for every livestock animal in the United States.
Bruce Akey is an Assistant Veterinarian for New York state. He says the system will be able to trace the movements of animals backwards and forwards.
“Whether they’re sold to someone else on an individual basis, or they go to livestock markets, or go to slaughter plants, or anything like that, those movements can be recorded at those points at which they pass into commerce, and those movements can also be recorded in a national database.”
It’s the integrity of that database that is one major concern for many farmers and their advocates. They say animal rights extremists or terrorists could also get access to the information on the database about farms.
Farmers worry they could learn about chemicals and medicines used at the farm, and use it against them. Dairy farmer Earl Gingerich knows first-hand what can happen. Someone used a batch of antibiotics to contaminate ten thousand pounds of milk on his farm.
“We did have on a recording, which we couldn’t trace, and it said something to the effect of, ‘This should teach you a lesson now.'”
One microchip ID method being advanced in New York and other states is heightening bio-security concerns. The radio frequency chips can are embedded in ear tags or injected under the animals’ skin.
The stored data is read by large panel scanners at auction barns or hand held models, available to anyone. The cost is also still a big question. Maybe a few dollars for each chip and about five thousand dollars for large readers.
Peter Gregg is spokesman for the state’s Farm Bureau. He says they support a national tracking system, but Gregg says the government will have to make it secure – and pay for it.
“You know, we are operating on too slim of margins as it is to be able to pick up the tab for a program like this, and the other aspect is that we would have to make sure that there is protection of private rights.”
State veteranarian Bruce Akey says the government is listening to those concerns. He says they’re working to make the program cost-neutral or at least share costs with farmers. And Akey says Congress is hearing arguments that a private entity, such as a cooperative, should be allowed to manage the database. Advocates say they prefer that to the government being in charge of private information. But Akey says either way, there has to be a dependable way to track animals.
“It may seem a little like 1984, but it’s the state of technology, it’s the state of the marketplace – on both a national and an international scope,” said Akey. “That along with the fact that we now have diseases like Mad Cow disease and other food safety issues that more and more consumers are demanding that we be able to trace these animals and address the source of the problem.”
For now, states are rushing to comply with the first phase of the national ID program. By March of next year, every livestock and poultry farm in the country must be located and assigned a premises identification number. Then, each and every farm creature – be it cow or horse, elk or fish – will get its very own animal social security number.
