Beef Quality Assurance
Calf Pool Pilot Project
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West Virginia Feeder Cattle Marketing Pools Utilize RFID Ear Tags
Radio frequency ear tags (RFID) are currently a major conversation topic among beef producers. As the beef industry moves toward a National Animal Identification System, there has been quite a bit of debate about the pros and cons of tagging beef cattle.
Like any change that makes its way into our business, we naturally tend to be a little uncertain and uneasy. Some of the major concerns are cost, not just the tags, but the equipment that goes along with them. There are also concerns about privacy and who can find out the details of our operations. And of course there are concerns about how much time it will take to get the cattle tagged, what we will do if a tag is lost and how much paperwork this process will create. To get answers to some of these issues, forty-five beef producers participating in the feeder cattle marketing pools in Jackson and Barbour Counties collaborated with West Virginia University and the West Virginia Department of Agriculture to demonstrate RFID ear tags under practical conditions in West Virginia . The goals of demonstrating RFID tags during feeder calf pools included testing our ability to distribute tags to producers and collect the information needed for regulatory compliance, to discover potential problems with the tagging process and to determine if we could use the technology for managing the cattle and the data to make the sale more efficient.
Before going any further we need to get at some of the myths and misconceptions that making the rounds relative to National Animal Identification. A national identification system is not new. For decades we have been identifying cattle as part of brucellosis testing. We have also been identifying cattle in sale barns with state/federal backtags. Both of these are unique identification systems. The problem with these systems is that they need to be read and recorded visually, a slow and error prone process. While it has been possible to trace animals with these systems, the physical effort involved in investigating all of those paper records is simply not efficient enough to respond to an animal disease outbreak.
There is also a major difference between compliance with animal identification regulations and the use of RFID for management and marketing purposes. The National Animal Identification System is concerned simply with tracking livestock movement. Cattle do not need to be tagged until they change premises. For instance, cows in production and feeder calves do not need to be tagged until they leave the farm. To track animal movement, the only data that is needed is a unique animal ID number, the premise where the animal arrived and the date that it arrived there. These pieces of data will allow official animal health personnel to respond to a disease outbreak by tracing an animal's movement from farm, to sale barn, to stocker operation, to feedlot, etc. These data will also indicate what other animals might have had contact with a sick animal anywhere along this journey, and allow rapid follow up and disease containment. When we consider the economic impact of a foreign animal disease outbreak, having such a tracking system is certainly necessary. Remember that for tracking purposes, we do not need to know who sold the animal, how much it weighed or how much it was worth; we simply need to know when it moved to another premise.
When we tag animals for compliance with national identification, we also create an opportunity for marketing and management. Utilizing RFID tags to make management a little easier has nothing to do with tracking animals on a national level. It is an optional benefit of having a machine-readable identification tag. The concept of utilizing the by products of a national security program is not new either; global positioning systems, the Internet and even satellite television are all examples of technology that was initially developed to safeguard our Nation but are now a common part of everyday life.
The RFID tag is a very small radio transceiver and antenna built into an ear tag. When the tag passes by a reader it receives radio energy from the reader and transmits back its number. The only data ever stored on the tag is a fifteen digit number, and no two tags will ever have the same number. The tag number can not be changed, no electronic data can be written to the tag and the tag does not carry any link to the premise of origin. Since the tag is machine-readable, we can save time at the market by not needing to visually read and call out a number. Unlike the human eye, radio waves are not bothered by dirty tags or faded numbers and do not misread. These benefits mean that we can identify the animals at the market much faster and with perfect accuracy. For management and marketing purposes, other information can be stored in an external database and linked with the RFID tag number.
Feeder cattle marketed in West Virginia Calf Pools have traditionally carried a special ear tag. This tag indicates that the calf is part of a quality assurance program and has a unique number. For our RFID demonstrations we utilized "nested pair" tags. Nested pairs have a conventional visual tag like we have used for years, but it is packaged with an RFID tag. The two sets of tags are attached to a plastic carrier that makes the tagging process on the farm much easier. The producer simply pulls a set of tags out of the package, applies the RFID tag to the left ear and then applies the visual tag to the ear of choice. When producers requested tags for their cattle, they were supplied the requested number of paired tags and the numbers were recorded. From a regulatory compliance standpoint, this is all that needed to happen, since the history of an animal's movement throughout the industry began with simply allocating a tag to a premise. However, to make the sale day easier, the producer turned in records of the calf's sex and color, and its birth date prior to the shipment date. These data were added to a database and matched to the RFID tag number for that calf. Since we used paired tags, the producer did not need to have any special equipment at the farm - just a pair of tag pliers, a pencil and a paper form. This is a very important point; to comply with animal identification requirements or even to participate in a value-added program, no special equipment is needed on the farm. The vast majority of beef producers will never use an electronic tag reader.
When calves arrived at the scales on sale day, we used a handheld reader connected to a computer to read the RFID tag. Due to the volume of cattle passing through a sale barn, it will be practical to have some type of tag reader at livestock markets and the kind of equipment will depend on the volume of cattle passing through the market. From a regulatory standpoint we could have stopped here. To be in compliance all that we need to report is that the calf arrived at the sale barn. But to make things a little easier the computer confirmed who consigned that calf, the calf's sex and color and the number printed on its visual ear tag. In the event that an error had been made or the calf did not have complete information, we could edit the information on site. If necessary we could use the corresponding visual tag number to confirm the identity of a calf with a missing RFID tag and make necessary corrections. More than 1,600 calves were received at these two pools and only six calves lost their RFID tags and all of the tags present read properly. Since the RFID tag does not dangle below the ear like a conventional ear tag, it is much less likely to be caught and torn out. The RFID tag can also be placed a little closer to the base of the ear, making it more resistant to being pulled out. Once the calf was identified correctly, we could then type in the sale weight and the pen where we placed the calf. This process saved several hours of time normally spent reading dirty or faded tags in restless calves; for example more than five hours were saved on one day relative to the same set of cattle last year. No errors made in calf ownership, and the stress level for both the cattle and the people was greatly reduced. While we found very few problems with correctly tagging cattle, producers do need to take care that tags are applied correctly and the proper tagging pliers must be used. Since official tags will be allocated to a premise at purchase, it is critical to obtain the proper number of tags in advance; it is not possible to borrow official tags from a neighbor.
The future of the cattle business will rely more and more of having information to back up the cattle. Probably the most relevant piece of information in the next few years is going to be birth date. As we look forward to re-opening of export markets, a unique animal identification number and a birth date could prove to be a valuable marketing tool. Producers could also elect to record and share additional information such as specific management or health programs. Computerized records and RFID technology can make this process much easier and accurate.
