The Prairie Star (Prairie Star) After a recent announcement by Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns, participation in an animal identification system is a choice entirely up to individual livestock producers in all but a handful of states. [News Source]

Beef slaughterhouse plans to press ahead (CBC via Yahoo! Canada News) The board of Rancher's Choice Beef Co-Operative Ltd. is not giving up plans to build a slaughterhouse in Dauphin, in spite of the Manitoba government's refusal to give it more money. [News Source]

Squeamish consumers may balk as FDA backs cloned meat, milk. The FDA declared meat and milk from cloned animals safe to eat, though industry concerns about consumer reactions make their sale unlikely anytime soon. [News Source]

Cloned beef on the menu soon? Meat and milk from cloned animals could appear on Australian dinner tables after the United States made a preliminary ruling that it is safe to eat. [News Source]

Premise registration continues on plan (Iowa Farmer) Editor’s note: On Nov.. 22, the Bush administration pledged not to make a planned National Animal Identification System mandatory. However, that has not derailed movement toward a voluntary tracking system. [News Source]

Buying Food Fresh from the Farm (BusinessWeek Online via Yahoo! UK & Ireland Finance) Small farmers are finding a growing number of consumers hungry to buy meat, milk, and vegetables straight from the source [News Source]

Cloned Hamburger Meat Still Seen a Long Way Off (Environmental News Network) It may be years before consumers will be buying fast-food hamburgers or grilling T-bone steaks made from cloned cattle because the cloning process is too expensive and currently is not commercially viable. [News Source]

Domestic news (The West Australian) Meat and milk from cloned animals could appear on Australian dinner tables after the United States made a preliminary ruling that it is safe to eat. [News Source]

Cloned cow meat, milk deemed safe (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel) Meat and milk from cloned cows is safe to eat and might soon be cleared for sale to the public, the government said Thursday. [News Source]

Third US human case of mad cow disease (About.com) The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has identified a Saudi-born man living in Virginia as the third human case of mad cow disease (variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) in... [News Source]