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The U.S. mad cow scare could speed the nation's move to a
centralized system that electronically tracks animals as they
move from fields to feed lots to food stores. Efforts to create
a centralized database, which exist in some countries, have
been slowed so far by disputes over who would maintain the
database and who would bear its cost.
Such a database could let agricultural officials determine
within hours where a sick animal came from and where it went
during a disease outbreak or a terrorist assault on the food
supply. For now, inspectors often must rely on paper records
or a hodgepodge of data maintained by meat producers and breeders.
After the recent mad cow discovery in Washington state, officials
needed several days to determine where its meat had been sold,
and encountered discrepancies in U.S. and Canadian records.
Radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags on cattle ears
or implantable chips can be automatically read, sending their
data directly to a computer database, by sensors placed at
feed lots, slaughterhouses and other points along the chain
of livestock ownership. The database can maintain reams of
data about an animal's existence, including its breeding,
age, weight and medical history.
One problem is that the cattleindustry operates on a low
profit margin. Two Kansas State University professors recently
estimated that RFID tags and related equipment could cost
owners of small herds close to $25 per head of cattle; in
larger herds it would cost less than $4. Julie Stitt, administrator
of the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency which is scheduled
to switch to the new system by Jan 1, 2005, estimates that
the per-head cost could fall below $2 "not a whole lot
more than bar codes."
Resistance to the plan has come from meat producers who don't
trust the idea of establishing a central database that would
allow the government or rivals to know detailed information
about their operations.
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