Penn State Agriculture Magazine

Winter/Spring 2006 Issue

Helping to Head Off an Identity Crisis Among Livestock

John Comerford, associate professor of dairy and animal science, shows identification tags that animals wear in their ears. The tags contain scannable computer chips that will hold information about livestock.

While many aspects of Pennsylvania’s agricultural future are obscure, one thing appears clear. All livestock will soon have an identification number that will be kept in a database that holds information about the farm of origin and keeps track of the animal’s location. “That much we know,” says John Comerford, Penn State associate professor of dairy and animal science. “We’ll have some sort of identification for every livestock animal. With swine and poultry, it will be done on a lot basis—at least that’s the plan at this point—and cattle, sheep, and goats will be done by individual animals.” With the intent of tracking animals to guard against bioterrorism or to battle disease outbreaks such as BSE (mad cow) or foot-and-mouth, a joint program launched by the U.S. and Pennsylvania departments of agriculture will require some sort of identification process every time an animal enters commerce, such as being sold or being taken to a feedlot or a packing plant.

“There have been thousands of premises already identified in Pennsylvania, and it’s been estimated that there are more than 2 million animals, such as cattle, sheep, and goats, that would be identified,” Comerford says. “It is hard to say how many chickens and swine there are that would be registered in lots.”

Current plans call for the larger livestock to wear an identification tag with scannable computer chips to hold relevant information. “Of course, the driving force behind this is disease control: identification, localizing the susceptible animals, and stopping the spread of infected animals to other locations,” Comerford explains. “We have had no outbreaks of foot-and-mouth or BSE, but if that would happen, in today’s world, we would need animals to be identified to effectively contain the disease.

“It has been estimated that within seven days of a disease outbreak or an act of bioterrorism in five locations, 32 states could be affected,” he says. “That is what happened with foot-and-mouth in Britain. The disease spread everywhere before they could deal with it, and they were forced to destroy 10 percent of their livestock.”

ID tags Penn State’s role in the livestock identification program, according to Comerford, will be to act as a link between government agencies and farmers, to provide logistics to help expedite the process, and perhaps to design handling facilities to put tags into the livestock.

“We won’t have oversight responsibility for identification information or tags,” he says.“We will provide education to the producers and train them to use the new program. This is something
that farmers will have to deal with, just like they do drought, animal nutrition, and everything else.”

The one-on-one connection that county-based Penn State Cooperative Extension educators have developed over the years with livestock producers will be invaluable, Comerford believes, in getting the animal identification program off the ground in Pennsylvania. “There is no real strong central commodity organization in Pennsylvania within the livestock groups,” he says, “so our ability to work with farmers will be important. Our county extension educators still have a trusted relationship with producers on the ground, as well as a strong relationship with people in the industry. They know who we are. We realize that identifying the animals won’t be a quick or easy process. Nobody knows what it will cost, but close to $1 million already has been dedicated in Pennsylvania.”

—Jeff Mulhollem

Penn State | College of Agricultural Sciences | ICT

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