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Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns said last week that USDA's
"aggressive" timetable for a National Animal Identification
System (NAIS) is on schedule, and that it should be operational
by 2007 and fully implemented by 2009.
By next year, the agency expects an Animal Trace Processing
System to be in place, under which state and federal animal
health officials can query NAIS and private databases in
the event of an animal disease outbreak. However, since
only about 10 percent — or 235,000 — of locations housing
animals have applied for a premise identification number,
only a small number of animals will actually be traceable.
And most of those premises are in two states: Wisconsin,
where the program is mandatory, and Texas, which has been
aggressive in signing up ranchers.
Under questioning, Johanns could not give details about
how the program will be funded, saying only that USDA had
contributed $84 million for the startup and that there would
be a private enterprise piece to the national program. Resistance
to the program is starting to grow among independent livestock
growers, who see the funding of the entire program falling
on their shoulders.
Johanns also announced that another $3 million is about
to be awarded to fund field trials to evaluate new technologies
for animal identification and automated data collection.
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service is preparing
a report outlining findings in an earlier round of field
trials.
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