Published on the 21/07/2010 | Written by Newsdesk
A recent government standards announcement could mean losing another agri-tech race after kiwi’s do all the hard work…
New Zealand frequently leads the world when it comes to agricultural research and innovation, but Mark Rance is concerned that NZ could be about to lose our lead in the RFID space race to off-shore developers.
The National Animal Identification and Traceability (NAIT) standard has made RFID tags mandatory on all beef cattle from October 2011, with $7m in government funding also confirmed to implement the system. NAIT stipulates the use of tags which use the low frequency (LF) RFID technology.
Rance is chairman of Pathfinder, the RFID industry body that is a proponent of the new UHF (ultra high-frequency) radio-frequency identification technology. New Zealand has been pioneering the development of this new technology in the agricultural sphere over the tried-and-tested but less capable low frequency (LF) alternative.
“Low frequency RFID is the preferred option for NAIT because it is the only option where the hardware is commercially available at the moment, says Rance, so the selection is understandable. But it’s proven that UHF will work on animals, and work well especially with sheep, cattle and deer.”
The “proof” he is referring to is the four-farm trial of UHF ear-tags in livestock under taken by Rezare Systems Limited which compared the performance to LF ear-tags. The trial found UHF tags performed at least as well as LF tags and in some cases better with longer reading performance and faster data transfer – multiple tags could also be read simultaneously and from a greater distance than LF which is considered very beneficial for some on-farm applications.
“UHF has been subject to some well publicised physics-based limitations over time notably when being used in animal identification applications, but the fact is the technology has evolved and developed significantly in recent years and the issues of being unable to be read reliably near flesh and bone and being effected by industrial noise are now, in the main, resolved” says Rance. One key remaining issue is that there is currently no off-the-shelf commercially available UHF hardware for the livestock sector that meets NAIT requirements, particularly with regards to tag retention.
This is why NAIT, New Zealand’s National Animal Identification and Tracing system, opted for LF technology, Rance explains. Given this, Rance says he supports NAIT’s choice as no suppliers are currently producing the UHF tags to the high standard that New Zealand requires.
But his concern is that, in the meantime, suppliers from other countries are stealing a lead on us, notably in China. Chinese suppliers are currently working on developing high-quality UHF RFID animal tags which will meet all of the NAIT requirements, says Rance.
There is no doubt in Rance’s mind that UHF will be adopted by NAIT at some point in the future, the only question is who is going to benefit from this, an overseas supplier or the local providers of LF solutions.
“After doing much of the hard work, NZ runs the risk again of someone overseas ‘stealing our stuff’ as the popular television advert puts it.”
