USDA on Wednesday released the business plan for the next phase of its National Animal Identification System. The program, which right now focuses on registering individual ranches, farms and confined animal feeding operations, is going to have to take the next step in its development or risk potential loss of funding from Congress.

I reported on the plan Nov. 30 and at that time USDA was still working with members of Congress on funding. House appropriators had not funded the program again while the Senate has reduced funding from $35 million a year to $19.8 million. USDA funds were passed this week with the omnibus spending bill, but it's unclear just how much money was set aside for the NAIS in the final package.

NAIS effectively scored its biggest win to date in late November getting an operating agreement with the National Cattlemen's Beef Association. The group could draw up to $2 million, depending on its success signing people up. It will be fascinating to see how animal ID is worked into the NCBA convention in early February.

While the overall NAIS plan will have a multi-year approach, goals in the final year of the Bush administration will be to register as much as 90 percent of the farms and livestock in the swine, poultry and sheep industries by 2009. In the beef industry, USDA wants to achieve a "critical mass" that would register 70 percent of farms, ranches and feedlots that reflect or represent 70 percent of the nation's commercial cattle as well.

In the world of cloning, two of the biggest commercial operations for livestock clones, ViaGen and TransOva Genetics, announced Wednesday that they have developed a tracking system that give each cloned animal a unique ID. That ID program would be entered into a registry and used by livestock auction markets or packers and processors to identify the animal, Reuters reported.

"The database would make it easier for companies to show consumers their products are not made from cloned animals. It was unveiled as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prepares a final ruling on meat and other goods taken from clones."

In a preliminary decision earlier this year, the FDA has effectively given cloned animals a seal of approval to become part of the food chain, but consumer groups and some companies have stated they do not want to have meat or dairy products from clones on grocery shelves.

Sen. Barbara Mikulski, D-Md., attached an amendment to the farm bill last week that halts the FDA endorsement of creating food from cloned animals as well.

"Just because something has been created in a lab, doesn't mean we should have to eat it. If we discover a problem with cloned food after it is in our food supply and it's not labeled, the FDA won't be able to recall it like they did Vioxx -- the food will already be tainted. We have been down this road before with product safety -- the FDA has a credibility crisis," Sen. Mikulski stated in a news release.

And from Canada, another case of mad-cow disease has been confirmed on an Alberta farm, the country's 11th case of the disease.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency stated the cow was 13 years old, did not enter the human or animal food chain and came from an unidentified farm in Alberta. It should be pointed out the cow was too old to enter the U.S. under the new border agreement. The U.S. is only accepting cattle born after March 1, 1999.

Still, the cow again raised questions. Of course, I saw the first mention of this latest case from an R-CALF news release on it. R-CALF President Max Thornsberry raised a valid point about the animal because even though the live cattle cutoff is 1999, all beef processed in Canada is allowed into the U.S.

"Had this 13-year-old cow not been detected under Canada's limited, voluntary testing program, the meat from that cow would have been eligible for export to the United States," Thornsberry said in the Minot (N.D.) Daily News. "Cattle (older than 30 months) in a BSE-affected country bear an inherently higher risk for disease, and the USDA is acting irresponsibly by allowing both higher-risk beef and higher-risk cattle into the U.S. food supply."

USDA took a more business-as-usual approach with a Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service PR person stating that USDa had already expected more cases of BSE up there. USDA has repeatedly stated that such beef is still safe. Yet, there's always that point that Sen. Mikulski made. Problems with food safety always seem to be found with better hindsight than foresight.