01/16/07 NAIS

NAIS. I'm Greg Martin with today's Line On Agriculture. Being able to track livestock is not a new idea. Ranchers discovered years ago that by branding their cattle with a distinctive mark, they could tell whose cattle belonged to what ranch when all the cattle were rounded up and driven to market. Today, the federal government is looking at taking it a giant step forward with the National Animal Identification System. Livestock and poultry owners are being asked on a voluntary basis to register their operations or premises and secondly to register the animals either individually or as a lot. To date, 24 % have been registered which is 1% short of the January 07 goal. According to Dr. John Clifford, The Deputy Administrator for USDA´s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, the USDA is working with the livestock industry to increase on premises livestock registration. CLIFFORD: These agreements are to partner with the industry, to encourage premises registration from the producers in the pork sector, actually we estimate about 67-thousand premises out there of which about 22-thousand have registered. The registration consists of three components. Premises registration where you register your location; animal identification provides producers with a uniform numbering system for identifying their animals and a way of linking those animals to their birthplace or premises of origin and finally animal tracing. Animal tracing is currently under development. The initial stages of the NAIS are proving useful due to the extreme weather producers in Colorado are experiencing by helping to evaluate the safety of not only the livestock but ranchers and their families in remote regions. Phone calls to registered premises helped locate animals and determine if they had access to feed. Clifford says that the USDA is making 400 thousand dollars available to the pork industry to help with the registration. CLIFFORD: We are getting ready to enter into a cooperative agreement with the National Pork Board and have actually talked to other non-profit livestock and poultry industry organizations. To date we've had two requests, one from the National Cattleman's Beef Association as well as the one from National Pork Board. That's today's Line On Agriculture. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.