Animal Identification

Looking back into the history; people are always possessive about their cattle or animals. Several methods had been adopted to distinguish animals of one owner from another like iron branding in which symbol or name of the ranch is branded on the skin of animal to identify the ranch to which it belong. Red hot iron is used for branding the animals hide which was quite painful.

The need for the labeling of animals is because of the fact that most of the time animals graze in the common grazing area and it avoids dispute arising from the right of ownership of the animals. Disadvantages of the above method were that identification has to be done manually and it was quite painful for animals

Branding of animals
With the advancements of time branding was replaced by plastic or metal tags tied to the animals. However this was usually done for the cattle and identification has to be still done manually. Another problem faced was the cases of lost pets identification which could only be done by some crude methods like birth marks which are not very reliable to ensure the fool proof identification.

Plastic Tags

As the RFID came into the picture; the old plastic tags are being replaced by RFID tags, they are mounted in the same old fashion but it has many more advantages. Even Injectable RFID tags are now available which can be injected through special syringe to remain under the skin of animal. There is no outer mark for other person to know the location of the tag so the chances of tampering of the tags are minimal. The chip inside the tag is read only so data once entered cannot be modified. These tags are being successfully used for pets today; these tags have a life span of 25 years which is generally more than the life span of pet. They can be placed on any pet irrespective of its size. As the tag is inserted inside the skin the tags can’t get dirty or lost. These tags can be scanned by the remote reader. The number of RFID tag is unique to avoid any dispute arising from the duplication.

The scanning of the animal can be done through the remote RFID scanner or the portable one. The RFID reader is connected to the remote database which contains the unique RFID number, Animals date of birth, medical history, last vaccination date and other identification marks.

                                                    

Injectible RFID Tags

Some of the advantages of using the RFID system are:

• ·        Not painful to animal
  ·        Tags not externally visible
  ·        Keeps record of vaccination, medical history, health checkups etc.
  ·        No chance of duplication due to unique number
  ·        Automated identification
  ·        Provides audit trail traceability for food safety in case of cattle
  
  
  Future scenarios:
  
  
  ·        These systems can be used on endangered species which would enable environmental agencies to monitor the number of species. Although radio tagging is being used in some places but majority of them are using crude methods like animal dropping etc for the animal census. This could also prevent poaching as animals hunted would be easily known.
  ·        It is possible that government by law made it mandate to tag all the animals. Pet tagging would be enable better health record of them while livestock tagging enable government to have better monitoring of their food supply chain.
  ·        International bodies may mandate all food produced from farm animals may require traceability of the animals from which food was made. Thus record from animals can give clues to prevent unknown diseases from being spreading into humans.
  ·        Keeping the medical track of animals may prevent the spreading of diseases like swine flu by early desolation of the infected animal.