Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

After leaving the computer, I realized that many, if not a majority of
Ridecampers, do not live in Brand Inspection States, and thus do not know
how brand inspection is supposed to work.  By the way, I do not propose to
get dragged into a discussion about whether it actually does work.  That
would be for a completely different time and place.  I am going to assume
that the eventual regulations and practice will be reasonable and piggyback
on existing practice.  To make this post shorter, I will assume that the
only real differences will be that horses or cows that travel will have to
have a positive ID.  I will also use the term "microchip" because it is a
method that likely would be used on horses.

In MT one can own a horse or cow on his/her ranch and never have it brand
inspected.  That's right, never.  If the animal never goes out of your
county, it doesn't have to be inspected.  This is quite similar to owning an
automobile that you keep on your ranch and never drive on the roads.  If you
remove the animal from the county, it must be brand inspected.  If the
animal will only be moved once or a few times (like a beef steer going to
slaughter) a cheap temporary brand inspection is issued.  If you are smart,
and your horse will be traveling to endurance rides for 10 or 20 years you
pay more ($15 if I remember correctly, but I am not sure as the price just
went up) and get a lifetime inspection certificate.  The inspector spends
10-15 minutes on each animal carefully recording markings, and if the animal
is registered comparing to the registration papers.  The piece of paper you
get is equivalent to an automobile registration, and must be shown on demand
if you are on the road.

If in the future, the animal had to be microchipped, the brand inspector
would most likely verify the chip and compare it to the certification by the
vet (or whoever was licensed to put it into the animal).  I suspect, that
animals going directly to slaughter may not have to be microchipped, if they
were born on the shipping ranch.  My reasoning is that the idea behind the
regulations is that they will allow the use of slaughter house records to be
used to find where all the animals lived during their lives.  The resultant
meat will still be pretty anonymous (you can't chip each and every
hamburger).

Anyway, under this scenario, no person is forced to tag any living thing,
any more than we are forced to identify any automobile unless we want to
drive on the public roads.

Since the basic proposal includes all meat animals, the final regulations
concerning chickens may be interesting.  It is my understanding, that the
production of chicken involves a hatchery, a factory farm where they are
grown, and the slaughter house.  Egg producers have another step since many
of the "farms" where the eggs are laid, purchase the hens from the "farm"
that raised them until they reached laying size.  I have never heard of "mad
chicken disease", but you never know. (There are other reasons why it is
good to be able to ID source of meat, for example if the meat has an illegal
residue from contaminated feed.)

Ed
Ed & Wendy Hauser
2994 Mittower Road
Victor, MT 59875

ranch@xxxxxxxxxxx
406.642.6490

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I drink a 50/50 mix of rootbeer and soymilk at the vetchecks.
~  Libby Llop

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