No Mandatory Animal ID

The National Animal Movement Database, which will allow U.S. Department of Agriculture health officials to trace an animal or group of animals back to their source quickly, was rolled out Thursday.

Charles Miller, chairman of the directing organization called the U.S. Animal Identification Organization, said the system seeks and stores only four pieces of data: the premises identification number, the individual animal or the group number, the date of the "event" necessitating the input of information into the Web-based system and the "event" code, which identifies whether the event is the birth, first sale, slaughter or a list of other possibilities.