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Federal agriculture officials used the mid-May animal identification exposition as a time to roll out the framework for a national system to track livestock.

About 500 livestock representatives, researchers and government officials, including several from Ohio, participated in the U.S. Animal ID Expo in Chicago. Members of a task force who developed a U.S. Animal Identification Plan (USAIP) also presented information from individual specie working groups on how to tailor any plan to work with all species of livestock.

David White, OFBF’s director of commodity relations, attended the expo and said the USDA plan, as well as the USAIP, was designed to control communicable foreign animal diseases within 48 hours.

"If we can’t trace back an infected animal within 48 hours, a highly communicable foreign animal disease could spread like wildfire," White said.

U.S. Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman announced in late April that a framework for implementing a national animal identification system had been designed with partial funding coming from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC).

USDA’s John Clifford, administrator of the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s Veterinary Services department, explained that program during a session at the expo.

The first phase is for nearly $19 million to be transferred from the CCC to provide initial funding for developing premise identification procedures. White explained that a "premise" is anyplace where animals live. That would include fairgrounds, sale barns, feedlots and any facility that houses livestock, which includes farm-raised fish, hogs, sheep, goats, cattle, horses, poultry and hogs.

Even though the USDA plan calls for significant funding for the entire program -- $19 million in FY 2004 and $33 million in FY 2005 – those figures fall far short of the estimated $78 million needed to get the program up and running. White said the remainder will fall back on the states.

"The entire premise ID system should not cost the producer much, but the individual animal ID portion could," White said, adding that many state governments are taking a wait-and-see attitude on whether the $33 million that will be proposed in the FY 2005 budget will be approved.

Confidentiality is still a significant concern for all parties involved, White said. Discussion at the expo focused on two areas of confidentiality – 1) that the issue has to be taken seriously, or 2) that the industry is making too big of a deal about it.

Regardless of how things work out, White said producers have to have confidence in the program for it to work.

But producers also need to get ready because an animal ID system is coming.

"If U.S agriculture is serious about being a player in international trade, in exporting meat and poultry products, we have to have (an identification program)," White said. "This will be an animal health plan that will protect our food safety and security, and it will ensure that our livestock producers still have access to the international marketplace."

The program is still a work in progress, White cautioned. And even when it’s rolled out and starts to be implemented, "there will probably be a few bugs in the system that will need to be worked out, but if producers embrace it and understand how it’s beneficial to them, it will be a good thing for the industry," he said.

For more information, visit www.ofbf.org and click on Featured links.