Livestock ID - Age and Source Verification

Information about how age and source verification is affecting the Montana beef producer

The domestic and international market system has influenced the creation of a number of alliances and programs to address the demand for source and age verified beef cattle. While complementary, these programs are unrelated to NAIS.

Source and/or age verified programs utilize the RFID tag technology to record and verify the sources and ages of beef cattle to fit end use programs, such as the Japanese Beef Export Verification program and customer demand from Wal-Mart and McDonald’s for verified product. It is likely that these programs will build on the premises registration and animal identification elements of NAIS as more producers, feeders, and others adopt the components of that system. The key elements of a source and/or age verified program include:

• Animal identification tag

• Source information (could be USDA premises identification number)

• Age information through some form of a birth date, birth month, birth quarter, etc.

• Data stored in a national database

Source and/or age verified programs, if carried through the packing plants to the meat product, would provide the foundation for voluntary or mandatory country of origin labeling (COOL) programs, which are designed to provide source information to end product consumers.

There are a number of source and/or age verified programs available to beef cattle producers and more are introduced every week. For example, Superior Livestock Auction has announced their VASE (Verified Age Source Electronic ID) program and Northern Livestock Video Auction has introduced the VESA (Verified Electronically ID Source and Age) program for cattle commissioned on their sales. Many of the breed associations offer verified programs as well.

Costs to producers for involvement in any of the private source and/or age verified programs will depend on the program the producer chooses to join; however, anticipated costs will include the tag and a database management fee charged by the national database company.

Producers interested in enrolling cattle in a program for source and age verification may contact the Montana Beef Network (Lisa Duffey, 406-994-4323, lduffey@montana.edu) or one of the animal identification data management companies listed below:

To be included on this list, please send an email with a representative's contact name, phone number and/or email address to Lisa Duffey, 406-994-4323,
email: lduffey@montana.edu

Return to regular view	Text-only	Updated: 08/14/2009