The Wisconsin Livestock Identification Consortium recorded the state’s millionth RFID tag, a milestone in Wisconsin animal identification, reports the Cattle Network.

“We’ve seen a dramatic example of how RFID can save producer headaches and taxpayer dollars,” said Ben Brancel, secretary of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.

The Wisconsin Department of Agriculture recently performed tuberculosis tests on a 3,000-cow herd that had been exposed to imported cattle, all of which were tagged with RFID. “If we’d had to manually read and record identification for that many animals, we would have needed 36 staff members and it would have cost $84,000”, said Brancel. “With RFID, six people did it, it cost $22,000.”

In March 2008 Wisconsin recorded more than 130,000 RFID numbers and just a year later in March 2009 that number increased to just over 400,000. Today, there are more than 1 million RFID numbers being used amongst various species across the state.

WLIC has worked with local producers, county fairs, veterinarians, and other livestock groups to promote the value of animal identification and RFID for herd management as well as animal health and traceability purposes. WLIC also offers tag programs where producers and county fairs looking to implement RFID can apply to receive RFID tags at no cost.

Read more here.

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