10/25/07 Costs drop for animal ID tags

Anytime there's new technology there's a cost involved. But over time, competition enters the arena and that's usually a benefit to the consumer. KNIGHT "Cost of the tags are dropping. Cost of the readers are dropping. And it's all because of the consumer demand that is out there and the volume metric increases that come with that." That's USDA Undersecretary Bruce Knight talking about RFID, radio frequency animal identification tags. When USDA contracted with three companies to product the radio frequency ear tags that are animal i-d compliant the idea behind it was cost savings. KNIGHT "The exciting thing for a farmer like myself has been the unit cost. That comes out to $1.13 per tag and about a decade ago that same RFID technology would have cost eight or nine dollars per tag and so we have really seen the RFID technology cost drop as the companies gear up to provide that volume of tags to the United States government." Knight says there are a half dozen federal disease programs that need to be animal ID compliant themselves. That's why USDA went shopping. Over a million and a half RFID tags at a cost of 1.7 million dollars have been purchased by the federal government for specific use on state-federal cooperative disease control and eradication efforts. Today's Idaho Ag News Bill Scott