News & Perspective

(CIDRAP News) – Under a schedule laid out yesterday by federal agriculture officials, a nationwide livestock identification system to help in the investigation and control of animal disease outbreaks will be fully operational by 2009.

(CIDRAP News) – The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) last week announced it would spend $18.8 million to begin a three-stage process for setting up a national animal identification system to help contain animal disease outbreaks.

Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman said the goal of the effort is a system to identify farms and other sites exposed to foreign animal diseases.

(CIDRAP News) – Animal disease outbreaks and concerns, including avian influenza and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), are currently reducing global meat and animal exports by about one third, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said today.

(CIDRAP News) – Mexico closed its border to livestock from the United States last week because of concern that a herd of US cattle bound for Mexico had foot-and-mouth disease, but the border was quickly reopened when the disease was found to be a relatively harmless look-alike.