February 6, 2010

USDA seeks to shift responsibility for tracing livestock

The US Department of Agriculture wants to take a new tack on how to keep track of livestock in the US in order to trace outbreaks of disease, making the effort cheaper and shifting responsibility to state governments.

Under the new framework, identification requirements would be focused on groups of livestock rather than on individual animals and would only be applied when they are shipped between states, according to the USDA.

"One of my main goals for this new approach is to build a collaborative process for shaping and implementing our framework for animal disease traceability," USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said Friday (Feb 5). "We are committed to working in partnership with states, Tribal Nations and industry in the coming months to address many of the details of this framework, and giving ample opportunity for farmers and ranchers and the public to provide us with continued input through this process."