Federal livestock ID plan stirs resistance (The Martha’s Vineyard Times) The federal government's plan to identify farms and track livestock strikes some members of the Island agricultural community as intrusive and misguided, although others view it as necessary for containing any future outbreak of an infectious animal disease. [News Source]

Abviva Announces Letter of Intent to Acquire Prion Developmental Laboratories (Finanzen.net) Abviva, Inc. (f/k/a Genesis Bioventures: OTCBB:GBIW) today announced that it has entered into a Letter of Intent with the Receiver for Efoora, Inc. appointed by the United States District Court For The Northern District of Illinois ... [News Source]

Abviva Announces Letter of Intent to Acquire Prion Developmental Laboratories (Business Wire via Yahoo! Finance) LOS ANGELES----Abviva, Inc. today announced that it has entered into a Letter of Intent with the Receiver for Efoora, Inc. appointed by the United States District Court For The Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division to acquire all Prion Developmental Laboratories, stock owned by Efoora, Inc., PDL's current majority owner. [News Source]

Russian deal on U.S. beef reported. Russia recently bought its first U. S. beef since mad-cow disease scared off international buyers four years ago. [News Source]

Auction yards fight Canadian border cattle rule (Rapid City Journal) Five South Dakota auction yards recently hosted fundraisers that generated more than $50,000 to support a legal battle to stop older Canadian cattle from coming into the United States. [News Source]

New Tests Identify Lethal Prion Strains Quickly And Accurately (Science Daily) Scientists have developed two new tests for prions, infectious proteins that cause a number of diseases including "mad cow disease," and a human counterpart, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. These advances open the door to better understanding and diagnosis of these troubling conditions. [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]