1 SECTION 3 Animal identification practices Animal identification systems, to the extent practicable, should be in place at primary production level so that the origin of meat can be traced back from the abattoir or establishment to the place of production of the animals. Source: FAO/WHO, 2004. M. BLEICH, SWITZERLAND Animal identification practices SECTION 3 3 INTRODUCTION rightful owner, and the person in whose hands they were wrongfully found could be Livestock identification is essential to modern prosecuted. farming and underlies all successful management. Various types and methods of Hot branding identification have been developed for Branding animals (Photo 3.1) with hot irons has application under different circumstances. been in use for some 4 000 years. While placing In the earliest times, branding was used to a permanent mark on the animal, branding has associate animals with their owners. Many several disadvantages: pastoral tribes developed sophisticated systems • Size limitation means that the number of of identification based on skin colours and symbols that can be put on to the animal’s patterns. skin is limited and individual identification The need to identify an animal in order to cannot be effected. track its path through the production chain and • Branding damages and devalues the eventually into food products – known as animal’s hide – the more prominent the mark, traceability – has become central to many the greater the damage and the financial identification systems in recent times. loss. • A poor branding technique or the use of ambiguous symbols negatively affects THE RATIONALE FOR IDENTIFICATION readability of the brand. The use of series of coded symbols as is current in modern There are two main reasons for putting practice renders readability difficult. identification marks or devices on animals: proof • “Blotching” of brands – a technique of of ownership and management/traceability. overbranding used by stock thieves – easily renders brands unreadable. Establishing proof of ownership • Normal growth of the animal distorts brands Since the earliest of times, people have sought applied at a young age, so that by the time means of identifying livestock in order to place the animal reaches adulthood, the brand is their mark of ownership on them. Livestock no longer legible. recovered after theft could be returned to their • Growth of hair, especially the forming of a long hair coat during winter, can often make brands almost invisible. • Different stock owners may – intentionally or unintentionally – use the same or similar brands, thereby causing confusion. • The position of brands on the animal – usually placed at the lowest possible points on the limbs to minimize damage to the hide – also makes reading them difficult, especially when animals are standing in pens, and the structure of the pen obscures the view. • The fact that branding is left to the owner of the animal means that brands, even within the same herd, vary greatly in appearance and readability. Brands can be copied illegally and used by others. Lack of central control over the use and application of brands underlies many of the problems experienced with their use. R. PASKIN, MEAT BOARD OF NAMIBIA • Welfare questions have also begun to be PHOTO 3.1 AVOID: unreadable cattle brands in Namibia – branding raised with respect to the use of brands. The cannot be used for the clear and unambiguous identification fact that branding causes pain and distress needed for modern traceability can no longer be ignored. Good practices for the meat industry 4 Despite the obvious disadvantages of means that an animal has to be physically branding, the technique remains cheap and for caught and examined, first to establish whether this reason it is still used to effect owner it has been marked at all, and second to attempt identification, especially in developing countries. to make out the symbols that have been used in If brands still have any use at all, it is to identify the tattoo. These difficulties render tattoos an animal’s owner. They cannot be used to usable only for ownership confirmation. identify an animal for the purposes of modern Another disadvantage comes with identifying management and traceability. Where there is successive owners – whereas an animal may be currently no feasible alternative to hot branding branded at several places on its body to mark for identification of animal ownership, the several successive owners, only two ears are standards outlined in Box 3.1 should be available for tattoo marks. rigorously adhered to. Management and traceability Cold branding The need for identification of stock has evolved. Cold branding, using liquid nitrogen to cool an In many circumstances, confirming ownership is iron to extremely low temperatures for the no longer the central need. Animals themselves purpose of marking an animal, has all the need to be identified in order to record their disadvantages of hot branding – except that it is progress in terms of weight gain, fertility, presumed to be less painful. It is also expensive susceptibility to sickness, etc. and thus facilitate and difficult to apply, and out of the reach of breeding selection and management. poorer farmers. Identification of animals is also necessary when carrying out diagnostic procedures (e.g. testing Tattooing for brucellosis) so that animals that show up The use of tattoos has as its underlying serologically positive can be culled. philosophy the identification of the animal’s More recently, the need has arisen to identify ownership, as is the case with branding. There is animals for the purposes of traceability. Where a no central control over the application of problem is detected in a live animal far along tattoos, the number of symbols that can be used the production chain, or even in meat derived on any individual does not enable individual from the animal (e.g. the detection of identification and – most importantly – potentially harmful tissue residues or a disease readability presents a great problem. Animals such as bovine spongiform encephalopathy are normally tattooed inside their ears, which [BSE]), it has become necessary to trace backwards along the production chain to establish when and how the problem occurred. Box 3.1 Hot branding Steps can be taken to correct the problem, and give reassurance to consumers that quality control of the production chain is in place. Where branding is used for proof of ownership, the following Various techniques for placing identifying standards should apply: marks on or within an animal’s body have been • The characters/symbols used should be large and clear (at least developed for effecting identification that 7 cm high). meets these management needs. • Characters should be alphanumeric and not pictorial, for ease of storage on a database register. Visual tagging • The brand should be placed at a prominent place on the hide, Tagging animals – usually with plastic tags e.g. upper thigh, rump or shoulder. affixed to their ears – has been in use for • Animals must be firmly restrained for branding. decades. Many farmers have used handwritten • The branding iron must be heated to red heat and pressed to tags as a management tool. Durability of these the animal’s skin for 3–5 seconds. tags has long been an issue, especially as the • The iron must be re-heated to red hot before use on another tags often fall out or become bleached and animal. unreadable. • Owner brand symbols should be registered with a central Great strides have been made in the authority. production of tags, however, and tamper-proof “dual tags” that can be printed with laser Animal identification practices SECTION 3 5 animal, and are clearly and quickly readable from a distance of around 2 m. The tags can easily last the life of a slaughter animal and can be used to register its progress at all the steps along the production chain. Within their own management systems, farmers can easily establish databases based on such identification to monitor progress in terms of other parameters such as weight gain and feed conversion. Tags have been developed in various shapes and sizes for different species of animal, with larger plastic tags in vogue for cattle and buffalo and small tags – either plastic or metal – being more suited to use in sheep and goats. Alphanumeric codes may be used on these tags and are easily stored in computerized databases. The main disadvantage here is that R. PASKIN, MEAT BOARD OF NAMIBIA the recording of an animal’s identity as it moves PHOTO 3.2 along the production chain must be done GOOD PRACTICE: calves with double ear-tagging in the United Kingdom: manually, and may be subject to errors in tamper-proof pre-printed tags are widely used for animal identification transcription. Bar-coded tags The advent of bar codes has brought about further progress in ear-tag development. Tags printed with bar codes have all the advantages of visual tags in terms of retention and readability – except that reading and recording are effected electronically through the use of a bar code scanner or reader. The possibility of human error is thus eliminated. However, there is one problem – the presence of dirt on a bar code often renders it unreadable, meaning that the tag may have to be physically cleaned before it can be read. Another obvious disadvantage is the need for an electronic infrastructure – a system of computers linked to scanners – for bar code usage to be effective on a wide scale. The financial outlay associated with bar code usage R. PASKIN, MEAT BOARD OF NAMIBIA thus limits its use to countries where the needed PHOTO 3.3 infrastructure can be afforded and maintained. GOOD PRACTICE: animal with double ear-tagging in Italy Bar coding is usually combined with visual coding.