By EMMA HOPKINS-O’BRIEN

Indiana Correspondent

INDIANAPOLIS, Ind. — The USDA will be changing its national ear-tagging requirements for animal agriculture, from standard metal to electronic radio frequency identification (RFID) tags.

By Jan. 1, 2023, RFID tags will be will be required for all cattle – both dairy and beef – and bison moving interstate. By the end of this year, USDA will discontinue providing free metal tags.

Animal health authorities believe the new tags will make disease traceability more efficient because the numbers can be scanned instead of having to be read off of tags, which can be eroded or soiled. Scanning tags is also faster than reading off numbers manually.

A voluntary program, Turn In-Trade Up, was launched this summer to encourage use of electronic ID in cattle and bison. A similar program granted RFID tags manufactured by a British company called Shearwell to a small number of cervid producers, to determine how the tags performed. Comments so far have been favorable.

The same brand of tags were offered to a small number of sheep and goat producers via a grant from the Indiana State Department of Agriculture (ISDA) to determine how the tags function for those species.

“The Shearwell tag will be tried in sheep/goats and cervid species,” said Dr. Cheryl Miller, the designated scrapie epidemiologist for the Indiana State Board of Animal Health (BOAH). “This tag has been used for many years in Great Britain and Europe and has been well-received. We are encouraging our producers to try it to see if they like the way it functions in their animals.”

In general, the new tags will be more expensive than the cost of the current standard metal tags – $2, compared to the average $1 for metal tags typically used by sheep and goat producers. Cattle are the only species currently on a deadline to adopt the tags.

“USDA’s goal is that all livestock will eventually move with RFID ear tags,” Miller explained. “We do not have a timeline for other species such as swine, sheep, goats, cervids, et cetera.”

Many sheep and goat producers participate in a scrapie eradication program to prevent the spread of the pathogen, a highly contagious prion disease affecting the central nervous system of sheep and goats. This program requires animals to wear approved ear tags.

Miller said the Shearwell tags have been approved by USDA for use in sheep and goats, but will not list scrapie ID numbers on the actual tags. However, since RFID tags are traceable, producers will not need to put a second tag on animals, but only keep a record of scrapie IDs on file.

In addition to RFID tag adoption, veterinarians will be required to use Indiana-approved digital certificates of veterinary inspection (commonly referred to as “health papers” or CVIs) for animals travelling out of state. Miller said this shouldn’t be much of a shift because that technology is already used by more than 90 percent of the livestock moving out of the state.

“BOAH personnel are happy to assist veterinarians in getting set up to use this technology,” she said; to contact BOAH, call 877-747-3038 or visit www.in.gov/boah