Debate over branding has ranchers lamenting loss of enduring symbol of the West

One of the West's most enduring symbols is fading like a red-hot branding iron cools to ashen gray. With concerns over disease and global trade trumping tradition, federal regulators want ranchers to swap the old-fashioned cattle brand for electronic ear tags to quickly and reliably identify livestock. Ranchers from Livermore to Laytonville accept the inevitability but lament the passing of a ritual older than America -- the smell of trampled sagebrush and burned hide, the sound of whinnying horses songs around campfires and friendly boasts among friends. "Cowboys are said to ride for the brand. It's hard to imagine anyone riding for an ear tag,'' said Jon Christensen, executive director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University. The debate over the USDA proposal, with a final rule expected within months, "is not just a fight over the best way to identify, track and ensure the ownership and safety of cattle," said Christensen. "This is a battle over a powerful western icon." But the discovery in late 2003 of a cow in rural Washington infected with mad cow disease inspired federal officials to find a better way to instantly track livestock. They feared that the U.S. could suffer the same fate as the United Kingdom, which quarantined and killed tens of thousands of animals after a foot-and-mouth disease outbreak, devastating its agricultural economy...more

USDA has taken a page out of the FBI book. They have legislation on the shelf to expand their power just waiting for a crisis.  Look what happened after the Oklahoma City bombing and 911.  For USDA, all it took was a couple of Canadian cows imported to the US.  All of it is government by fear.  Instill fear in the public and expand your power.  Unfortunately, it works.