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.