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Wisconsin’s premises ID program needs funding

Wisconsin’s mandatory livestock premises identification program is facing financial hardship.  Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium President Keith York tells Brownfield they can’t presently charge fees, and federal funds have dried up.  “Our projections are in a year from June, we will run out of money, so we need to find more funding in some way or form before next year.”

 

The consortium gets 250-thousand dollars a year from the State of Wisconsin, but York says annual costs are about 450-thousand.  York says one possibility is to raise funds through packers and producers.

Terry Quam with the Wisconsin Cattlemen’s Association says producers might opt for that to preserve the privately held database.  “That number that’s held by the producer for the producer is confidential.  No one can use the Freedom of Information Act to access it.  If it moves in-house to the Department of Ag, Trade, and Consumer Protection, then it becomes available through the Freedom of Information Act, so the producers have to decide how valuable that is to them, how much they want the provision left intact.”

 

If the legislature moves forward with allowing the WLIC to collect fees, Quam says the process might take two years, and it will run out of money before then.