NAIS will not address animal disease or food safety problems.

In the battle for resources to fight bugs, drugs and thugs, bugs always lose.

I believe that the introduction of foot-and-mouth would be devastating and that all reasonable steps should be made--must be taken to prevent an introduction of this or any other foreign animal disease into the United States.

However, I would also invite my colleagues to pay particular attention to the testimony of our witnesses who are concerned about the potential pitfalls of a mandatory animal identification system.

A mandatory identification program will create tremendous amounts of data.

I expect we will hear from a lot of witnesses today that say that animal identification is a good thing.

But I don't understand why we would put the American taxpayers' dollars at the bottom of the food chain.