E-Vet Clinic - Horse Health Care

The state of Illinois has taken the first step towards implementing the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) by starting a voluntary livestock Premises Registration.

So what does this mean? Lots of red tape is what I see in the future. Withholding my biasis of how ridiculous this program actually is, I’ll give you both sides of the story. What it means for you as a horse owner in Illinois or rather a horse breeder/raiser in Illinois, they are requesting that you register your facility as a production site or livestock market. It is the first step in the NAIS plan which includes registering of production, animal registration, and finally animal tracking. The thought is to be able to track where an animal comes from at all time in case of a foreign animal disease is discovered. This will speed up the process of being able to trace back where an animal has been. The NAIS plan is to be able to do this within a 48 hour period of time. From the Illinois Department of Agriculture

Premises registration is the first step you can take to protect your investment in Illinois’ livestock industry. A database of locations where livestock are produced, raised and kept, will aid animal health officials. A system with proper trace back and trace forward capabilities provides timely response to minimize the economic impact in the event of an animal disease outbreak. The discovery of BSE in the U.S. has emphasized the need for a 48-hour trace back system.

When you register your premises it will be kept secruely on a database used exclusively for this program. Eventually the program will be able to track a single horse and if that horse becomes ill with a foreign disease, all of the horses movements from where it originated will be in one database for inspectors to trace back. From there they can contact and or trace any other horses that one came into contact with. For more information on the NAIS program go to animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/index.shtml

Now if all this sounds a little big brotherish to you, I agree and so does NoNAIS.org which for some reason is no longer there! SO if this website or blog post comes down you will know that the federal agents in support of the NAIS program have gotten to me as well.

OK out of the black helicopter conspiracy government is bad mode and back to reality. There are several people opposed to this program as they feel it does infringe on their privacy. Here are several websites that do oppose the NAIS that have not been removed.

www.noanimalid.com/
www.rfid-weblog.com/50226711/nonaisorg_we_dont_need_no_stinking_tags.php
www.nonaiswa.org/
www.cafepress.com/nonais

In my opinion the program may have merit, but at what cost and trusting the government to make good on its promises has never been a strong faith of mine. What I mean by this is keeping the information private and only for use in the prevention of an outbreak. I do not believe in conspiracy that the people trying to have this program go forward have other intentions than exactly what is stated, but in the future the government will have access to these records for who knows what down the line. After the BSE scare here in the US they are trying anything and everything to prevent a horrible outbreak even if it means bending a few rights given us in the constitution. I also feel that this program although well intended will fall short of what it is trying to accomplish. Government is notoriously slow and I will see this program as no different, lots of red tape and record keeping, which will be great for the big businesses that are already tagging and tracing but for the individual horse owners that have a hard enough time keeping their breed registration papers in order this is going to be a real pain in the rumpus. Will it actually be able to do what it is intended to do…prevent a massive outbreak…in a word, no.

Do you have kids and are they interested in horses or you would like them to be? Well I have a website for you. The University of Guelph has redesigned their horse website. I heard about it and went to check it out at www.equineguelph.ca It is a nice website but what I found there was another link to another site and if you have kids you are going to want to go to www.equimania.ca This site will definitely teach them about horse health care and they will not even know the are learning; they are just having fun.

Equimania Stables is very well designed with a lot of cool computer tricks such as books you read online that you use your mouse to turn the page just as if it was a real book. The tack room which teaches your child about colors, leg markings, face markings and it looks like they will have in the future anatomy. I got a perfect 100 in Happy Appy’s stall (stall 3 - hint be sure to pick the stall too). Oh and try and beat my high score (low time) on putting items away in the grooming box. You will find this game in the wash stall. I was able to do it in 5.9 seconds after about a dozen times it is quite addicting (did I say this site was for kids?) I did notice that a couple of pages are not finished but overall a very creative site and educational on how to care for your horse definitely worth a visit. So be sure to check out www.equimania.ca and teach your children about horse health care in a fun way!

For the past 2 days I have been talking about the horse slaughter bill and my fear of an increase in unwanted horses after its passage. Well instead of focusing on the actual bill and arguing whether it should pass or not, and whether it will cause an increase in unwanted horses there is already a problem with unwanted horse. There are horses becoming unwanted due to the recent drought and increase in hay fields turned into corn fields this year for ethanol production which has seriously caused a lack of hay. This lack of hay is causing a large increase in its price and many horse owners are finding that they are unable to care for their horses. These horses are becoming neglected and unwanted. So despite my feelings about the horse slaughter bill causing an increase in unwanted horses it is happening without the bill being passed for other reasons, which is why I am supporting the Unwanted Horse Coalition (www.unwantedhorsecoalition.org).

One of the best things this group has done is posted a list of facilities that are accepting horses, so if you have or know of unwanted horses check out their website and especially this list to place horses —>Facilities accepting horses.