To avoid future costs, cattle farmers should consider using NAIT-compliant electronic ear tags when they tag livestock this year, says National Animal Identification and Tracing project (NAIT) chairman Ian Corney in the Rural News. The suggestion follows a recent move by the Animal Health Board (AHB) to approve NAIT-compliant tags as secondary tags under its national identification programme to control bovine tuberculosis in cattle and deer. "˜The great thing about the AHB move is farmers can avoid having to apply an additional ear tag to cattle to meet anticipated NAIT obligations,' says Corney. "˜We're asking cattle farmers to consider the approved electronic tags for newly born animals that will be alive in July 2011 "“ when NAIT is planned to become a regulatory requirement,' he says. If the NAIT scheme is approved, RFID [radio frequency identification device] tags will become mandatory from 2011.Farmers could avoid the need to re-tag in 2011 if they start using the new technology this year. However Federated Farmers is warning farmers not to purchase ear tags in anticipation of the proposed National Animal Identification and Tracing (NAIT) scheme. "We are concerned with comments made by the chairperson of the NAIT governance group urging farmers to purchase low frequency radio-frequency identification (RFID) ear tags," says Lachlan McKenzie, Federated Farmers Dairy chairperson. "Aside from the fact NAIT is by no means guaranteed in its current guise, this makes no commercial sense whatsoever when many farmers have little or no farm income. "It's premature and irresponsible given the financial pressures farmers are currently under. "Anyway, with just a few hundred NAIT RFID ear tags being sold right now, why would any farmer pay over the odds when prices will come down later? "If NAIT, or a similar system is introduced, millions of ear tags will be sold and mass manufacturing tells us the price will be much, much less than what it is today. That's supply and demand. "Federated Farmers is currently investigating the cost of Ultra High Frequency RFID tags. Our discussions on Chinese sourced tags indicate a price point substantially lower than what exists today.
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