WASHINGTON — Days after the United States recorded its first case of mad cow disease, then-Agriculture Secretary Ann Veneman promised to speed development of a system for tracking the nation's livestock.
The idea was to enable investigators to trace the whereabouts and history of any animal within 48 hours of a disease outbreak.
Nearly four years later, that system is still on paper.
And the revised plan the Bush administration is due to release soon seems to bear less resemblance to the system about which Veneman was talking.
The chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, Rep. Collin Peterson, D-Minn., said he has given up on the program until a new administration is sworn into power in 2009.
Peterson once introduced legislation to make animal ID mandatory.
"We have our head in the sand if we think we can get by without having one," he said.
QUESTIONING AG DEPT.
Chris Waldrop, who follows food safety issues for the Consumer Federation of America, says the ID program "doesn't seem salvageable."
The Agriculture Department has "mishandled it and Congress is fed up with them, producers are fed up with them and consumers are fed up with them," he says.
USDA wavered between making the program mandatory or voluntary - talk of requiring producers to participate no longer exists - and was too slow to put down rumors such as the ID system would allow the government to spy on producers, Waldrop says.
For evidence of congressional frustration or lack of interest, look no further than the USDA budget for 2008 as passed by the House.
Not a single dime is available for the department's work on the ID program.
USDA officials argue they are making progress, pointing to the rate at which farms, feedlots and processors are signing up for premise ID numbers.