Canada - Changes to cattle ear tags

Any bar-coded dangle tags still hanging from Canadian cattle's ears will officially become plastic jewelry effective July 1. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which was previously expected to de-list bar code tags as of Jan. 1, 2010, said Friday that the bar code tags will be de-listed July 1 in favour of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. Starting July 1, all cattle must be tagged with approved RFID tags before they move from their current locations or leave their farms of origin. "Although this change may be an additional one- time process for some producers, the ability to easily capture information from the RFID tags will help all producers in the long run," said Darcy Eddleston, a Paradise Valley, Alta. producer and chairman of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency (CCIA), in a joint CFIA/CCIA release. "We have worked with government to move forward on traceability and we believe that de-listing the bar-coded tag will advance traceability initiatives." Existing bar-coded tags should not be removed, but left on the ear. An RFID tag must then be applied to the same animal, the agencies said. Producers who haven't already done so must cross-reference that new RFID tag with the existing bar-coded dangle tag in the Canadian Livestock Tracking System (CLTS) to make sure all tag data and history on a given animal is maintained. That data includes all events uploaded by the producer against the tag...more