05/23/05 Producers views on animal id

When an informal survey was taken at the recently held Animal ID Symposium it was apparent that Western producers think identification is not only possible by 2009, it will happen before then. Rick Stott is chairman of the Northwest Pilot Project, a group dedicated to developing a working animal identification system. He says 18 months ago hardly anyone supported mandatory animal identification. STOTT "A lot of it has to do with market driven issues such as Japanese age verification, country of origin labeling, those kind of issues. This will serve as the foundation for a lot of those other market driven initiatives." While it may be market driven it's not without obstacles to overcome. Stott says they have three areas of concern today. STOTT "The issue of group lot management. We don't sell individual animals. Commerce doesn't move individual animals, commerce moves groups of animals. Second is confidentiality across the states, both in state law and federal law is a big issue. The third area is just the infrastructure that doesn't exist today." Six months into it more than 21 thousand animals are already enrolled in the Northwest Pilot Project which also has data on 75 hundred transactions. Today's Idaho Ag News