New Zealand deer farmers will have to be able identify every animal in their herds in a process that will eventually enable every grazing animal to be tagged with a microchip.
The new system is to be rolled out from late next year for cattle and deer, and will be mandatory by 2011, said Ian Corney, chairman of the National Animal Identification and Tracing scheme.
The project is a joint industry-government initiative that will provide a database tracing livestock, starting with cattle and deer, from farm to slaughter.
It is expected that eventually it will require farmers to individually identify each of the nation’s 40 million sheep, probably with radio frequency identification tags, which can be automatically scanned and linked to information on databases.