ST. CLOUD, Minn. -- Find it. Track it. Stop it.

Those are the goals of a nationwide animal-identification system being rolled out to track livestock diseases and possible terrorist attacks on the nation's food supply.

But while some farmers welcome the move, saying it will help bolster consumer confidence in U.S. meat and help them market around the world, many worry about how much it will cost, who will keep the data that's collected and how it will be used.

The tracking system is being implemented after the nation's first case of mad cow disease and a highly pathogenic outbreak of avian influenza in the past year.

Once it's up and running in the next few years, agriculture officials said, the system will attempt to identify all animals and premises that had direct contact with a foreign animal disease within 48 hours after discovery.

It would use a variety of technologies to track animals and poultry from birth to processing.

There are still many unknowns in the ambitious plan, which is being developed by the government and agriculture industry as they follow in the footsteps of other countries, such as Canada, which track livestock. The U.S. government has awarded initial funding for setting up the project, but farmers expect they'll have to chip in to cover costs and labor.

For now, the system is voluntary, though there's a good chance it will become mandatory later.

What just about everyone seems to agree on, though, is that some sort of animal identification system is needed.

``This system is a very important component in our effort to protect our livestock industries from the harmful impacts of disease outbreaks and the threat of agro-terrorism,'' Minnesota Agriculture Commissioner Gene Hugoson told about 50 farmers in St. Cloud during a session by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to gather farmer input.

The government has allocated $18.8 million in nationwide emergency funding for the first phase, which involves setting up a system to identify as many livestock farms, markets and slaughterhouses as possible in the next year. Minnesota will receive nearly $435,000 in the first phase, which begins in October.

The agency has yet to determine overall costs for the system, which will take several years to fully implement. For 2005, President Bush's budget requests $33 million to continue identifying premises as well as to identify animals, issue tags and test technologies.