Support Grows For ID System

MAINE - Livestock and poultry producers will be offered an opportunity within the next two months to help build a state animal identification program through a series of "listening sessions."

Officials at the Maine Department of Agriculture's division of animal health are in the process of identifying locations that manage or hold animals and assigning them a "premises" identification number.

Public interest in such an identification system is growing after a number of animal-disease outbreaks around the world, and after the single case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy -- mad cow -- found in the U.S. in 2003.

Judy Perry, program coordinator, said premises include veterinary clinics, stables and livestock markets as well as the backyard stables of people who have just one or two animals.

The sessions will be held Oct. 10 at the University of Maine at Augusta, Oct. 12, at the University of Maine at Farmington and in the Thomas Auditorium on Nov.16 at the University of Maine Hutchinson Center in Belfast. The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced its National Animal Identification Program in 2004 and has proposed that each state be in compliance by the year 2009.

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Source: Kennebec Journal

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