Keeping tags on animal history

By PAULA OLIVER

Consumers demanding to know the history of the meat on their dinner plates could benefit from an animal tracing system developed by an Ellerslie company.

Known as the Edit tag, it allows farmers to store an animal's life and health history on a handset, with the option to transfer it onto a database.

The system was developed by Electronic Data Holdings in response to growing demand for greater transparency in the food and meat industries.

The company says that cases of mad cow and of foot and mouth disease overseas are likely to lead to more stringent requirements being placed on the labelling of meat.

"Europe is moving towards mandatory traceability, and with this we are able to meet the proposed international regulations," said Colin Harvey, of Electronic Data Holdings.

"It's probably taken 10 man years of development, which is part of the reason it hasn't been done before."

Mr Harvey, who is also managing director of animal health company Ancare New Zealand, said the difference between this latest development and others available was that farmers could read or write data to the tags through a handset.

The handset - resembling an oversized Eftpos keypad - changes or extracts information on an animal's ear tag microchip. Protected on the back of the ear tag, the microchip is read via radio signals.

The handset stores information on everything from an animal's drug history to its projected weight, details of where it has been farmed and reminders of when it becomes safe for consumption after treatments.

Only the animal's owner, who has a security code for the handset, can write data into the tag or database's memory.

"Previously, read and write systems have had difficulties with security - they were able to be corrupted because anyone could write information in," Mr Harvey said.

"Our security extends to the fact that only medical professionals will be able to put drug data in, using a security code."

Only one handset has been made so far, but 10 more will have been manufactured by the end of this week for field testing.

Mr Harvey said the plan was to eventually have the microchip as an implant in an animal's ear, rather than on a tag.

It is expected that a handset will cost farmers $1000. The ear tags would bring the cost for an average herd up to $5000.

Different aerials would be fitted so that animals could be read as they passed through a race, or from closer positions.

Mr Harvey said that the small team who developed the device, with the support of 30 investors, would need more investment cash to take the device to European and other overseas markets.

"We can even see the potential for it in forestry, to track logs, or in freight, to track containers. Anything that needs tracking could use this technology."