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In September 2006, the Uruguayan government initiated a mandatory livestock labeling project. The project is supervised by the Ministry of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries. It requires RFID labeling of a total of 12 million cattle nationwide to track cattle from The whole process from birth to dinner table. The RFID system will be connected to an Internet-based database that records the growth history and location of each Uruguayan cattle in the country. So far, some of the largest farms in some countries have completed 2,000,000 cattle labeling; the government hopes to achieve all domestic cattle labeling by 2012.
Uruguay is one of the largest beef exporters in the world, exporting raw cattle and beef to Japan, Europe, the United States and other countries. The country has been looking for a way to achieve electronic tracking and control infectious diseases such as mad cow disease for the past 10 years.
The completion of this project will make Uruguay the first country in the world to implement cattle RFID tracking nationwide, according to Antonio Pietravallo, president of Cybercampo SA. Cybercampo provided iCampo software for the project to manage the data collected by RFID readers. Boreal Technologies provides hardware integration for the project.
The pilot project was launched on some large farms at the end of 2006, and some farmers-mainly government inspectors used Logic Workabout Pro PDAs and Agrident AIR 200 RFID readers to track cattle’s position changes. Each cow is ordered with 134.2 kHz button ear tags. The tags are provided by Allflex and Rumitag and comply with ISO 11784 and 11785 standards.
Farmers and government inspectors use Logic Workabout Pro PDAs and Agrident AIR 200 RFID readers to track cattle’s position transitions
When the pilot project ended in July of this year, Fabian Audisio, Psion Teklogix’s business development manager, said that the government plans to start full-scale application of the RFID system. The first batch of application farms will consist of a number of large farms, including those participating in the pilot project. These participating farms only need to label new born calves. Some small farms (such as some with only about 10 cattle) will be required to label them later.
At present, the system workflow is as follows: When a calf is born, the farmer puts ear tags on its two ears. The right ear has an RFID tag with a unique ID number; the left ear is a visual tag. , The same ID number is printed on it. The farmer or government inspector enters the cow’s gender, breed, and date of birth on Workabout Pro, including the birth farm; then uses the device to read the right ear tag and associate the ID number of the tag with the entered animal’s birth information. The record can be obtained by password. When the cow is to be transported to another place, the farmer and inspector will read the label again and indicate that the cow has left the farm.
Logic Workabout Pro PDAs and Agrident AIR 200 RFID reader
So far, the last reading of the cattle label occurred when the animal was transported to the slaughterhouse. The pilot project is progressing well without significant problems, Pietravallo said.
The ultimate goal of the government is to continue to track cattle to the processing plant. There, once the cattle are slaughtered, large pieces of raw beef (including processed beef packs) will also be labeled, and the labels will correspond to the original cattle labels.
Pietravallo said that the Uruguayan government is also facing “enormous cultural barriers” related to cost and farm system motorization, and it is difficult for all farmers to adopt RFID tags. Currently, the labels used by the farms are distributed free of charge by the government.
After the pilot project is completed, the government plans to purchase 1,000 Workabout Pro handheld readers, Audisio said. The price of each reader is $750. The government will sell readers to farms in need, and the government’s pricing of readers and how long the tags will remain free has yet to be determined.
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