The U.S. Department of Agriculture is taking public comment until October 5 on the transition to Radio Frequency Identification only ear tags on cattle. The Ag Department is looking at approving only RFID ear tags for official use in movement of cattle that are required to be identified by traceability regulations.
South Dakota Stock Grower’s Association President Scott Edoff is against using only RFID tags, he says the high cost of those will be passed onto the producer and there’s also privacy concerns with those.
Nebraska Cattlemen Association President Ken Herz says the most important thing is to have a quick traceability system in place and RFID tags would achieve that.
Edoff says the other ID methods that are available have worked well in South Dakota for years and he doesn’t see any improvement in changing that.
Herz says it’s more efficient to have RFID tags that can be entered into a database.
Both Cattle leaders encourage their members to submit comments on the RFID issue.
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