Saddle up, horsemen, they’re going to try to take us for a ride.
The government has found a new crisis…one dairy cow was identified as
having BSE, mad cow disease…and now it is absolutely necessary we have
a national livestock identification system—which will include horses--so
we can track animals throughout their life cycles.
In other words government will have a system in place to tax, to create new
and bigger agencies at greater costs, to regulate the movement of horses and
to put the “out-of-pocket costs” of identifying each horse directly
on the horse owner.
Big Brother is watching.
Of course, I’m not saying any of that would happen.
The whole “wave the flag and give us a drum roll idea is to “ensure
there is a system in place for horses in case of a major disease outbreak,”
Dan Fick of The Jockey Club is quoted as saying. Fick is a member of the American
Horse Council’s National Equine Identification Plan Task Force and chaired
its second meeting in Dallas, TX. The results of the meeting: “The task
force reviewed and highlighted specific details that must still be worked out,”
according to Fick. Now there’s a surprise…the meeting accomplished
nothing; but probably had some nice expenses attached to it.
Just asking, but what in the world is a system of horse identification going
to do to protect horses from a major disease outbreak? If giving flu shots can’t
stop the flu, how is giving a horse a number going to stop West Nile?
What needs to be done in the case of a major disease outbreak is notification
of horse owners. You can do that these days in a matter of hours---we have the
Internet, cell phones, faxes and e-mail. Wake up; this is the age of technology!
Identifying a sick horse is relatively easy—no need for an electronic
transponder inserted in his neck. If there are a lot of sick horses in the same
place, then get the word out; horsemen who have had horses in that area will
know they had their horses in that area. No need for a national task force to
tell them they had their horse in that area.
Horsemen aren’t as stupid as government thinks. Horsemen check on their
horse’s health; they get medical attention if needed.
The touted benefits of a national identification system for horses include “protection
of equine health, reductions in the number of disease outbreaks and the ability
to limit the effect so that the commercial and recreational segments of the
industry could continue to operate both domestically and internationally.”
Just asking, but how does a national identification system protect horse’s
health? Most horses in the U.S. today are already identified—they are
registered with a breed association…they have papers, markings, numbers
and DNA samples. I have yet to see all that protect a single horse from any
disease.
How is an identification system going to reduce the number of disease outbreaks?
Will viruses have to check in with the task force to be assigned the identification
of the horses they can attack, and then be told to limit their attack to only
those horses the task force has listed?
The first two claimed benefits for a national identification system are ludicrous.
The third claimed benefit is even worse. By the time a governmental agency gets
through the paperwork of getting started, any long lasting disease will have
run its course and be over. That’s about the time the government is going
to scrap the identification system and start calling horse owners to ask: “Do
you know where your horse was seven weeks ago about 10:30 p.m.?”
The task force is made up of representatives of about 30 organizations who are
supposed to evaluate and determine guidelines for such an identification program.
Surely one or two of them will wake up and identify this crisis as another “phantom”
without substance.