Missouri cattle producers could be looking to the federal government for help after the Mad Cow crisis in the country, and a Missouri Senator says the feds could help. Senator Jim Talent, who sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, says he’s happy with the federal Agriculture Department’s response to the Mad Cow Disease discovery in Washington State. And now he’d like to see a better identification system for cattle throughout the country – by identifying point of origin, for instance. Talent admits that could cost million of dollars just to get started – even more later on – but it’s something the government needs to fund to maintain the public’s confidence in the food supply. Meanwhile for cattle producers who have lost a lot of money as markets plummeted just after the announcement of the first-known case of the disease in the U.S., Talent says Congress might look at a relief package to help those people financially. Talent says some cattle producers have been helped because of the spike in market prices just earlier this year that is helping them still break even but he had hoped they could make some money this time around.
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