Washington (SmartAboutHealth) - President Barack Obama and his administration have made the decision to put an end to a long-running program which had the USDA tracking livestock.

The USDA has worked for years now to track cattle, pigs, and other animals.

Livestock in general was tracked with an ID tag basically, as this came about following the outbreak of mad cow disease back in 2003.

The plan was originally put in place by the Bush administration.

Instead of the costly national ID system, states will instead have to rely on their own identification systems to track livestock.

The cost of these ID tags and the system in general kept many farms and companies from signing themselves up.

Sen. Jon Tester from Montana has come out and stated that this was a bad idea from the start.

State-run systems will likely be compared to the national plan as they develop. For now though, it does not appear that there is much opposition to the nixing of this program.