[blackbelly] Stan Potratz' summary of the NAIP tagging

[Carol J. Elkins]

Stan Potratz, owner of Premier Fencing (http://www.premier1supplies.com) 
spent last week in Chicago at the Livestock ID Expo listening to reports 
from various industry segments regarding the National Animal Identification 
Program.

His summary...
For sheep and goats, the existing radio frequency ID (RFID) tags and 
readers have proven in initial trials to not be up to the task of a 
national tracking system. They are problem-prone and costly. It might cost 
the sheep industry over $15 million per year ($3.75 per breeding ewe/year) 
for the RFID tag, time to install/read, private database, and 
infrastructure. That's five times the cost of the lamb checkoff. And unlike 
the checkoff it provides few obvious financial benefits. So sheep and goat 
industry leaders feel we should stay with the visual scrapie system for 
now--and make it better.

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