Opportunity?

[rusty1]

grassfarmer - Brazil is actually farther along than we are in many respects. They have manditory national ID. And in fact are using some RFID tracking complete with GPS coordinates from pickup to delivery.

[ALICIA]

Rusty- what is RFID tracking and GPS cordintes.

[ValueChainFX]

RFID is in reference to Radio Frequency Identification, which we use in a limited way in Canada. Several tests are presently be done with these tags as well. The biggest challenge to date has been cost per tag. Also the ability for the producer to use the tag seems to be an issue as well. We have looked at several RFID tags and there is some hope here as technology gets better and less costly. I am pretty sure the future will see us going this direction or a combination of this direction and another technology in combination.

The GPS coordination is a method of pin pointing a location via satellite of a signal on earth.

Even though trials are underway I wouldn't throw away the bar code tags yet!

[ALICIA]

So I take it that these tags are being used in the bush to locate your cattle. you wouldn't need them at the packing plant. Well maybe you would, then the computer could read the tag going thow the shot, but once the head is gone hopefully the cattle are hung in the right order of reading the tags.

[ValueChainFX]

The tags are read with an electronic reader in the plant. since the carcass flow on a rail one after the other once the head is gone a roller with an electronic reader or holes in the roller and read with laser light indicates the carcass ID. This works up to the fabrication and then the side is broken into many pieces on as many as seven tables with up to fifty employees per table, this is were the trace back ends!

[ALICIA]

So what all does these tags read. and what is a sample of what is read.

[ValueChainFX]

ALICIA the tag can be used to identify the lot of cattle that is on the kill floor (actually an animal in the lot) once the tag goes through the reader it is added to the CCIA retirement list. The tag is then retired or the CCIA knows the animal has been slaughtered.

There is other information that could be collected in used but at this point most of that info is not available to the CCIA or the producer. This would be the type of information that may come from the Vision grading system.