RE: CCIA TAGS

[dan]

If I send 10 animals to slaughter, how can I be sure that I'm getting my carcass data after the animals have been skinned, tag gone with skin and my animal is on the assembly line along with 1000 others before they are graded.

[mfearing]

The animal ID is linked to the trolley ID.

[rsomer]

Since the plan is to use bar codes there are issues about the readability of dirty tags. I believe some numbers will need to be entered manually. The kill line moves fast and there will be pressure for the person reading the tags to keep up, human error is a concern. For these and other reasons as well, most other countries are going for the more expensive all electronic radio frequency tag. The reading I have done suggests that the bar code tag was chosen for Canada was because it had worked well for the dairy industry although the dairy industry was not using the tag in a kill floor setting. Some links of interest: http://www.destron.com/elect/elect.html Microchip Electronic Identification http://rfidnews.com/ Electronic Ear Tags http://rfidnews.com/american.html The Future of Animal Identification http://www.nlid.org/ The Dairy Tag People. http://www.wsava.org/homepage/microchip/icar399.html INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR ANIMAL RECORDING (ICAR) Re your comments elsewhere about government intervention in agriculture. I thought that was an excellent question and pondered it at some length. There are a lot of theories out there, fallacy of composition, externalities, market failures to name a few that are trotted out to justify government's invervention in agriculture. But I see the underlying reason that governments intervene in the market place is because we ask them to.

[ggilchrist]

Dan, I think even a more basic question is the contract obligation of the buyer to pass back that data. Its 'easy' to contract that data from a slaughterer but more difficult to contract that obligation on a buyer if your further down the finish chain.