Cattle Producers Now Have Easier Access to Animal Disease Traceability Tool
AgDay 08/12/21 - Cattle Tracing
In an effort to create robust transparency in food safety and traceability for possible animal diseases, cattle producers will now have easier access to RFID tags.
U.S. CattleTrace is unveiling a new store for producers to buy RFID tags. CattleTrace says these types of tags can be difficult to find and buy in an online setting, which is why and it created the tag store.
Leaders say getting RFID tags in the ears of cattle is critical to participate in animal disease traceability. The organization has partnered with tag distributors so producers can buy the tags on the web page and have them shipped directly to their operations. Companies like AllFlex are also rolling out innovation in cattle traceability and tagging.
"An electronic I.D. tag is a uniquely numbered tag globally, so into the North American marketplace, we use an 840 in the United States, a one to four in Canada to designate the country of origin that those tags go into," says Scott Holt, North American Marketing Manager AllFlex Identification. "And those are unique databases that those animals numbers are not replicated anywhere. All that's held on this simple ID tag is just that number. And then you scan it into a herd management program or a scale or a record keeping system that has additional data about that animal. "
Each tag and chip have the same unique 15-digit number, one for visual identification and one to use with an electronic reader.