It’s the Pitts: E-Cows
By Lee Pitts
It’s looking more and more like ranchers are going to have electronic identification (EID) ear tags shoved down their throats, whether they like it or not. In the future, they’ll be required to use EID tags so their cattle can be scanned like a can of peaches in the grocery store.
Here are 10 events I see happening to ranchers someday as a result. Just remember, you read it here first.
10. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) will have a huge air force of drones for the sole purpose of flying over ranches to take inventory so they’ll know exactly how many animals a person has and, at the end of the year, we’ll get an all-new inventory tax bill. Whatever happened to the unwritten rule it’s impolite to ask a rancher how many cows he or she owns?
9. Not only will the feds have drones to count cows, ranchers will have their own drones to take daily inventory. Then your neighbor will send you a feed bill for having five cows on his place for 27 days. If you thought the Hatfield and McCoys’ feud was bad, just wait until ranchers start spying on their neighbors.
8. The U.S. Forest Service and Bureau of Land Management will also have a drone air force. One day after the due date for getting all of your cows removed from your grazing allotment, they will do a flyover to make sure you got off on time. But, because the EID tag is still in the ear of a dead cow either killed by wolves or shot by a short-sighted hunter, the feds will assess you a huge fine, take your allotment away and throw you in jail for not removing ALL of your cows in a timely manner.
7. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) will say their new rules apply only to cattle involved in interstate commerce. But, is a rancher in California going to commit economic suicide because most of the California stockers are sold to feeders in Nebraska, Colorado, etc.? And by not using EID tags is he going to eliminate them from bidding on his cattle?
6. Auction markets are disappearing faster than a dozen donuts at a police station due to the U.S. beef cattle herd being the smallest it’s been in 64 years. This is really hurting some of the smaller auction yards. When they are told how much it will cost to install EID readers on their scale and to update computer programs to tie the information in with the price paid, many of the auction owners will just quit.
5. EID readers and computer programs will make the USDA’s job much easier. At the touch of a keystroke, they will know how many cattle and what prices were paid. This will allow packers to know immediately which auction markets to send their buyers to in order to buy their cattle the cheapest.
4. One day a producer will sell a slaughter cow to be ground up in a big batch of ground beef which could potentially have meat in it from a couple dozen countries. When it’s found a specific batch of hamburger has E. coli in it and because they’ll know the cow contributed to that particular batch, the USDA will send officials out to the producer’s place to depopulate their entire herd, including those two new $10,000 bulls they just bought. D9 bulldozers will then show up to dig a big trench and bury all of the beautiful cows. The packers will love it because they can assign all the blame to the producer, who will get sued and lose their ranch despite the fact the dirty cow meat actually came from Australia.
3. Using the IRS inventory, you will receive a big bill from the Environmental Protection Agency based on how many head you own multiplied by their supposed greenhouse gas production.
2. Good help will be as rare as a cowboy with a 401(k). This is because a cattleman will someday be able to check the temperature of all of his cows or all of his cattle in a feedlot with a drone and a special EID reader. Cowboys will be replaced by drone pilots and virtual fences.
1. Your inventory tax bill may be inflated by one head thanks to the longhorn head hanging over your fireplace with an EID tag still in its ear.
