WASHINGTON, D.C. – As the controversial mandate for ranchers to switch to electronic identification ear tags on cattle unfolds, one North Dakota Senator is seeing to it that producers have a ready supply to meet the USDA requirement.
Senator John Hoeven, Ranking Member of the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee and a senior member of the Senate Agriculture Committee, announced that the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) will provide an additional three million electronic identification (EID) tags for U.S ranchers.
This comes after Hoeven pressed APHIS officials to ensure that North Dakota ranchers have the resources necessary to comply with a new EID tag mandate that went into effect on November 5.
The APHIS rule requires “official identification” on certain cattle and bison moved across state lines for the purpose of animal disease traceability, and expanded the requirements for electronic ear tags used as official identification. For animals tagged after the rule’s effective date, the ear tags “must be readable both visually and electronically.”
“We pressed APHIS to ensure that our ranchers have the resources necessary to comply with their new EID mandate,” said Hoeven. “Our ranchers are already facing challenges from weather and high input costs, the last thing they need are additional costs from USDA mandates.”
As the lead Republican on the Senate Agriculture Appropriations Committee, Hoeven included $10 million in the Senate’s Fiscal Year 2025 Agriculture Appropriations Bill to explicitly fund the new APHIS tag requirement. That legislation has been approved by the full Senate Appropriations Committee.
