Prompted by pressure from industry, USDA has backed away from requiring ranchers to ID livestock in a federal database. The database was proposed last year in order to allow the agency to quickly track and stop the spread of disease between animals as well as disease spread from animals to humans. Currently, 23 percent of farms are voluntarily registered in the program. In April, Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns announced a timetable and implementation plan for the ID system, calling for all farms to be registered by 2009. Johanns now says the program will be mandatory sometime in the future, according to CBS. The database was proposed in response to the discovery of several cases of mad cow disease beginning in late 2003. One only has to look as far as USDA's website to see why an animal identification program is needed to protect the food supply. The ability to track a herd could be essential to containing a more serious outbreak of mad cow disease or another threat to our food supply. Like the recent spinach E. Coli outbreak, mad cow disease shined a spotlight on the failures of our food inspection system. Unfortunately, USDA has failed to live up to many of the promises it made after the first BSE-infected cow was discovered.