USDA Foresees Livestock IDs by 2009 - NYT 05/05/05

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New York Times 50/05/05

 

AP: USDA Foresees Livestock IDs by 2009

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The government is looking at making farmers, feedlots

and packinghouses track every head of livestock in the country from

birth through slaughter by 2009, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said

Thursday.

 

The discovery of mad cow disease in a Washington state Holstein is

driving the push to a mandatory nationwide system of animal identification.

 

The Agriculture Department proposes beginning with voluntary

registration of cattle, hogs, poultry and other livestock, then shifting

to mandatory reporting of livestock movement by January 2009.

 

The proposal floated Thursday is not official notice that government

rules will change, and the plan could change depending on response from

the livestock industry or others, Johanns said.

 

While the current goal is a mandatory system, ''somebody may convince us

otherwise,'' Johanns told reporters. Still, Johanns said it would be

tough for a system that has gaps in identification to work.

 

Producers, concerned about keeping their records confidential, have

protested the idea of a government-run identification system. Instead,

they've argued it would work better for the industry to maintain a

voluntary clearinghouse of information and give state and federal

officials limited access to it.

 

Efforts to keep records confidential are a key part of the new proposal,

which seeks to exclude records from the federal Freedom of Information

Act, said USDA chief economist Keith Collins.