RFID tags for goats could be in use as early as May 2014

Thursday, October 3, 2013

by JOE CALLAHAN

Ontario Goat announced Thursday that it is conducting field trials of two radio frequency identification tags (RFIDs) on goats on 14 farms in Ontario. According to Ontario Goat’s news release, it anticipates that the Canadian Food Inspection Agency will be requiring an identification system to be in place for goats in the province by 2015.

The field trial will use 500 tags from Allflex (product code 982) and 500 tags from Shearwell Data Ltd., (product code 0940). The tags from Allflex and Shearwell have already been approved by the CFIA for use on sheep.

According to documents provided to Better Farming by Kevin Weaver, the project’s coordinator, the field test has two objectives:

1. Evaluate the retention of the two RFID tags when applied to the either the ears or tail web of goats.
2. Evaluate the ease and success of application and the readability of the tags when applied to the ears or tail web of goats.

In order to be acceptable, Weaver says there must be a 98 per cent retention rate of tags on goats and the field trial needs to last a minimum of six months.

“Because the tag is already approved for use on another species, then the goat industry only is required to do field trials,” says Weaver.

The data from the tags will be read at the end of February 2014 and given to a statistician.  From there a final report will be prepared and sent the CFIA.

According to Weaver, the CFIA can take up to three months to review and approve the findings, which means that the tags could be in use as early as May 2013. BF