01/05/06 Consortium plans for animal id data base

A consortium led by the National Cattlemen's Beef Association has given USDA a proposal to manage the animal identification data base. Agri-Beef's Rick Stott who chairs the NCBA's Animal ID Commission says the package is on the desk of USDA Chief Veterinarian John Clifford. STOTT "That it will be privately managed, very efficiently managed, very inexpensive to the industry and it will be managed by the industry as a whole." The federal government isn't involved in the management of the data base and a board of directors representing the various animal groups will oversee the collection of information. STOTT "The costs of managing the data base will be somewhere less than 25 to 30 cents for the life of the animal and as the number of events and transactions increase that cost will go down dramatically." Stott says this animal ID system could be fully operational later this month. He's just waiting to hear from USDA. STOTT "We've already tested it through transactions and uploads of data through thousands of entries so initial testing is already being done and it will be live in January of '06, this month." Last summer Ag Secretary Mike Johanns said a private program would work much better than a USDA managed system. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott