Radio-Frequency Chips Coming to Cattle

Graphic compares passive and active cattle tracking tags; three versions. (AP Graphic) (AP)

TULSA, Okla. -- After growing up on a cattle ranch, John Hassell became an electrical engineer specializing in wireless technology. So he feels doubly qualified to offer this warning about the system taking shape to track cattle across America: It won't work.

To be sure, he doesn't quibble with the logic of the system. It stems from the Bush administration's plan to give agriculture inspectors the ability to pinpoint the origins of mad cow and other diseases within 48 hours. Livestock facilities and individual animals will get identifying numbers, which owners will use to document the beasts' movements in industry databases.

The system isn't expected to be fully online until 2009, but already it's clear that in the sprawling U.S. beef and dairy industries _ home to 100 million cattle _ many producers will automate data gathering with radio-frequency chips attached to cattle ears.

And that's what has Hassell worried. He contends most of the radio-frequency chips making their way onto cattle ears are a terrible fit.

Those chips _ based on the same radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology being integrated for inventory control by large retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. _ are known as "passive" tags that broadcast identifying numbers for only a short range, generally just a few feet.

While cattle may be considered docile creatures, they are a lot more mobile and skittish than cases and pallets in Wal-Mart warehouses. Hassell believes only "active" tags, which broadcast identification data for up to 300 feet, will consistently work for the multiple owners and many environments that cattle pass through, from pastures to stockyards, feed lots and slaughterhouses.

Hassell is so convinced that he's launched his own company, ZigBeef Inc., to sell long-range tags. The name is a play on the "ZigBee" wireless standard employed by his tags.

"I really don't think ... on a mass scale that short-range, passive devices are going to be practical," he said. "The Betamax of the industry is the short-range tags."

That makes Hassell sound like many other startup technologists _ pooh-poohing a rival standard at the expense of his own. But something makes this situation a bit unusual: Even beef producers who are using the passive flavor of RFID don't seem thrilled with it either.

The Joplin Regional Stockyards in Carthage, Mo., began using passive RFID to identify some cattle in 2001. But co-owner Steve Owens believes the technology "hinders the speed of commerce."

That's because the thousands of cattle that go through his facility wouldn't always naturally line up and orderly proceed past devices that can read electronic ID tags at short range. Most often, cattle quickly move through his yard in groups.

And if a cow has lost a tag or comes to him without one, "you've got to catch that animal in a head chute and hold it still so you can put the tag in an ear," he said. That can take 30 seconds each _ which adds up when you've got thousands of mooing creatures to deal with.