AUGUSTA — A panel of lawmakers serving on the Legislature’s Agriculture Committee unanimously approved a measure Wednesday that would ensure that Maine’s animal identification system remains voluntary, so long as the federal system does.

The bill, proposed in the last session by Rep. James Hamper, R-Oxford, was carried over into this year as state officials anticipated federal action on the issue. According to Dr. Don Hoenig, the state veterinarian, though U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack took a country-wide listening tour on the issue, he has yet to announce whether or not a system will be mandated.

“They haven’t made any decision and the funding for animal identification was drastically reduced by Congress; there’s no cooperative agreement money (for states),” Hoenig said.

The goal of animal identification systems is to make it easier for officials to trace disease outbreaks to their sources and minimize impacts on both humans and their food supplies.

But during the public hearing last year, some small farmers expressed concerns about costs associated with a mandated system.

“I would have to buy a computer system that serves only my farm and each microchip would cost between $25 and $40,” said Paula Stotts of Mechanic Falls at the public hearing in April last year. She was referring to a National Animal Identification System proposal described on the USDA Web site.

“If a fox gets a chicken on my farm and I can’t tell them within 24 hours what happened, that’s a $1,500 fine,” she had said. “If a goat wanders across the street and I don’t report that within 24 hours, that’s a $1,500 fine.”

Hamper said five other states besides Maine have adopted legislation similar to his proposal, which would also ban the state from adopting more stringent animal identification systems than the federal government.

Hoenig said he wasn’t sure what the federal officials would decide on the issue.

“They got a tremendous amount of negative feedback at the listening sessions,” he said. “There would need to be a better system, but what that turns out to be, I’m not quite sure.”

A bookend approach, which would record where an animal was born and where it was killed, could be an effective means of controlling disease outbreaks while being less burdensome than other proposals, Hoenig said. But he also doesn’t foresee any immediate problems with Maine’s current policies.

“The commissioner has broad leeway in tackling disease outbreaks” he said. “If you look at the states who have implemented mandatory identification systems, it’s to address tuberculosis.”

State Rep. Nancy Smith, D-Monmouth, suggested the Legislature review the policy in 2013, an amendment her colleagues agreed with.

The measure will face further votes by the full Legislature.

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