Technician Says Animal ID Tag
Tests Show Spotty Performance
By David Bowser
(Editor's note: If we're reading this correctly — and techno-jargon is not high on our short list of competencies — the radio frequency eartags and readers currently available for a national animal ID program are nowhere near ready for primetime. This is what real live cowboys who've tested them in real-world situations have been insisting all along. Of course, nobody listens to cowboys.)
KANSAS CITY — Everybody's talking about the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of technology in a national animal identification system, but Dale Blasi is doing something about it. He's testing the technology.
Dr. Dale Blasi is the director of the Animal Identification Knowledge Laboratory at Kansas State University, and his report card on the individual animal identification system indicates it is still a developing technology.
"The success of any national animal ID program, whatever it may look like," Blasi says, "based on the use of any automatic identification data capture electronic technology should not be validated in the marketplace. I think that's pretty obvious."
He says the system must have products available that have been tested in a transparent working environment. He says maximum capabilities are necessary to instill consumer confidence.
The Kansas State University Animal Identification Knowledge Laboratory is where Blasi and his researchers measure the variation of read range performance of tag and reader manufacturers.
In a study of six tag manufacturer products and three readers, only five tags and two readers had a 95 percent success at reading at a distance at 24 inches or more. No tag worked well with all readers, and the best one reader could do with any tag was less than a 90 percent read rate. That particular reader all but failed to read three of the tags.
The study represents about 18,000 readings.
The mean distance, Blasi says, for a successful read capture among the six tags and three readers was about 24 inches, though one tag failed at even that distance on all three readers.
The 24-inch standard was the recommendation of the Bovine Working Group.
With regard to practical animal management scenarios, Blasi says retention is most important.
"That's critical," he insists.
He says there is no sense in discussing technology if it doesn't stay where it's intended to be.
Blasi says speed, collision, read distance and surface orientation also have great impact on the read rate.
While retention is number one on his list of concerns, Blasi says cost is also a major factor.
"We need to be cognizant of cost delivery for our user groups," Blasi says.
A key component, he says, is developing standards and checking to see that equipment and processes meet those standards.
With regard to the National Animal Identification System, or NAIS, those standards are critical as to whether the equipment will work as designed and, since it is an open standard, whether one piece of equipment will work with equipment from another manufacturer.
For those reasons, the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, an international body responsible for setting quality standards, is extremely important.
Blasi says ISO standards are important for product compliance in the global market.
"We're dealing with a multiple supplier environment," Blasi says. "To invest, I think, is all predicated on the issues and aspects of risk, the security of our supply, longevity of systems and the overall collective benefits that users have from the research and development as opposed to proprietary systems."
The ISO is an international non-governmental organization that was established in 1947, Blasi explains.
It is recognized in about 140 counties.
"The overall mission of ISO is to promote development of standardization," Blasi says, "and related activities in the world to assist in the international exchange of goods and services, and also to develop cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity."
He says the standard is important as it pertains to animal identification.
"It represents the bedrock for compatibility and also transparency to ensure this overall national plan meets the needs for our states and animal health officials," Blasi says.
A standard, he says, is simply an acknowledged measure of comparison for quantitative or qualitative value.
"ISO's perspective of standardization is that activity for establishing with regard to actual or potential problems, provisions for common and repeated use, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context," Blasi says.
He says they are important.
"I don't want to under-emphasize the importance of standards, in that they help raise levels of quality, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability for all involved in a particular process," Blasi says.
The standards, he says, are documented agreements containing technical specifications or other precise criteria. They are used as rules and guidelines to ensure that materials and processes are fit for their intended purposes.
"What they are not," Blasi says, "is they do not have legal status in and of themselves."
They provide a template for bodies to develop standards. Regulators may adopt ISO standards unchanged or modify them to suit local requirements.
"The bottom line is that the intent is to produce standards that are internationally compatible, consistent and clear," Blasi says.
The standards are developed with the consensus of industry, vendors, users, consumer groups, testing laboratories and governments, he says.
"It's a partnership environment," Blasi says. "It's an industry-wide effort."
It's also voluntary.
"These standards are essentially market-driven," he says.
The standards are drawn up and developed by a series of committees and working groups. Some of the committees work at the technical level. Some work at the political level.
In the case of the ISO animal ID committee, representatives are appointed by a national standards body with one vote per country.
The political committee and the working group typically meet once a year. The technical working group, technical experts in the industry, meets four or five times a year. The subcommittee task groups meet as needed.
"One thing that is important is that ISO standards are not static," Blasi says. "They are live documents, and one reason why is there is a process in place for the experts to get together and to hash out issues that may arise as technology changes."
He says new work items are presented at these meetings. There are also periodic reviews of the standards.
"The ISO standards today with respect to the NAIS are basically ISO 11784, ISO 11785, ISO 3166 and ISO 7064," Blasi says.
There is some discussion with respect to ISO 14223 with regard to an advanced transponder.
"The two standards that are really important," Blasi says, "and I think it's important for everybody to spend some time on this — are ISO 11784 and 11785."
He says 11784 represents the code structure, the telegraph-messaging component of the system. ISO 11785 is the technical concept that describes how the transponder must communicate with the receiver or reader.
ISO 11784, Blasi says, represents the data numeric structure of the character code for electronic transponders.
Recent changes included additional information related to duplicate tag numbers, which was requested by the United Kingdom, and species codes, which was requested by the European Union, specifically Italy.
ISO 11785 describes the protocol for transmission of signals between the reader or scanner and the transponder or tag. This standard is further broken down into half-duplex and full-duplex transmissions.
While there were no changes in ISO 11785 at recent meetings, there was a consensus among manufacturers that further refinement and synchronization of readers is needed.
"We're talking milliseconds," Blasi says, "and ensuring that one reader in the proximity of another reader is aware that there may be a transmission occurring."
While ISO 11785 sets the standard for the National Animal Identification System with regard to communication between tag and reader, Blasi says ISO does not have responsibility for determining compliance.
"This is where they hand off under a 1996 agreement to the International Committee for Animal Recording," Blasi says. "Basically, it's an international non-governmental, non-profit organization with the primary mission for standardizing procedures and methods in recording livestock data and also establishing testing procedures for the approval of equipment and methodology."
This essentially revolves around the energy required to activate the tag and the reader and the data transfer back from the tag, or transponder, to the reader.
There are a number of categories in these tests, including laboratory tests and field tests.
While these tests include physical appearance, frequency of the activation field, field strength of the activation field, functional test and timing of the activation field, Blasi says there are some performance parameters that he thinks also ought to be included.
"It took us some time to gain some insights into how well tags work with whatever reader you have out there," Blasi says. "You have tags and readers that are both universally available under both 11785 and 11784."
He says everything should work, because they meet ISO standards.
"Subsequent work that we conducted last year and certainly work that my group has conducted this summer," Blasi says, "shows that there are some significant reader-transponder performance differences."
Those include the orientation of the tag, the read range of the scanner, and read speed.
"The quality of the tag itself," Blasi says, "I think is very important as well."
He says he hopes a chip with molded plastic around it and placed in the ear will last eight or nine months. Tag retention work continues in Montana.
"I think that at this point in time, the weakest link in ISO is that transponders and transceivers are not certified for performance according to the unified standard," Blasi says. "There needs to be a good housekeeping seal on the quality of the products that's produced."
Blasi says that as he understands it, the International Committee for Animal Recording, or ICAR, has standards that are in line to soon become ISO standards. He says several animal identification systems also are being worked on outside the ISO system.
Blasi says performance standards do not exist for any radio frequency identification technology, but the Bovine Working Group came back with some targets.
"They recommended 100 percent best orientation in the laboratory and in a field environment without regard to orientation, 99.5 percent performance," Blasi says. "That's awful high."
Blasi says the working group acknowledged that there was no scientific basis for their recommendations.
"It's important, I think, to develop some sort of performance standards," Blasi says. "By doing so, this technology would be better able to withstand legal challenge and also provide a fair and level playing field for everybody."
Blasi says that with the thousands of transactions that can potentially occur on a daily basis under a National Animal Identification System, to think it can achieve 100 or 99 percent accuracy is not fair to the system.
"We need to look at something being better than nothing," Blasi says.
Tests Show Spotty Performance
By David Bowser
(Editor's note: If we're reading this correctly — and techno-jargon is not high on our short list of competencies — the radio frequency eartags and readers currently available for a national animal ID program are nowhere near ready for primetime. This is what real live cowboys who've tested them in real-world situations have been insisting all along. Of course, nobody listens to cowboys.)
KANSAS CITY — Everybody's talking about the accuracy — or inaccuracy — of technology in a national animal identification system, but Dale Blasi is doing something about it. He's testing the technology.
Dr. Dale Blasi is the director of the Animal Identification Knowledge Laboratory at Kansas State University, and his report card on the individual animal identification system indicates it is still a developing technology.
"The success of any national animal ID program, whatever it may look like," Blasi says, "based on the use of any automatic identification data capture electronic technology should not be validated in the marketplace. I think that's pretty obvious."
He says the system must have products available that have been tested in a transparent working environment. He says maximum capabilities are necessary to instill consumer confidence.
The Kansas State University Animal Identification Knowledge Laboratory is where Blasi and his researchers measure the variation of read range performance of tag and reader manufacturers.
In a study of six tag manufacturer products and three readers, only five tags and two readers had a 95 percent success at reading at a distance at 24 inches or more. No tag worked well with all readers, and the best one reader could do with any tag was less than a 90 percent read rate. That particular reader all but failed to read three of the tags.
The study represents about 18,000 readings.
The mean distance, Blasi says, for a successful read capture among the six tags and three readers was about 24 inches, though one tag failed at even that distance on all three readers.
The 24-inch standard was the recommendation of the Bovine Working Group.
With regard to practical animal management scenarios, Blasi says retention is most important.
"That's critical," he insists.
He says there is no sense in discussing technology if it doesn't stay where it's intended to be.
Blasi says speed, collision, read distance and surface orientation also have great impact on the read rate.
While retention is number one on his list of concerns, Blasi says cost is also a major factor.
"We need to be cognizant of cost delivery for our user groups," Blasi says.
A key component, he says, is developing standards and checking to see that equipment and processes meet those standards.
With regard to the National Animal Identification System, or NAIS, those standards are critical as to whether the equipment will work as designed and, since it is an open standard, whether one piece of equipment will work with equipment from another manufacturer.
For those reasons, the International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, an international body responsible for setting quality standards, is extremely important.
Blasi says ISO standards are important for product compliance in the global market.
"We're dealing with a multiple supplier environment," Blasi says. "To invest, I think, is all predicated on the issues and aspects of risk, the security of our supply, longevity of systems and the overall collective benefits that users have from the research and development as opposed to proprietary systems."
The ISO is an international non-governmental organization that was established in 1947, Blasi explains.
It is recognized in about 140 counties.
"The overall mission of ISO is to promote development of standardization," Blasi says, "and related activities in the world to assist in the international exchange of goods and services, and also to develop cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity."
He says the standard is important as it pertains to animal identification.
"It represents the bedrock for compatibility and also transparency to ensure this overall national plan meets the needs for our states and animal health officials," Blasi says.
A standard, he says, is simply an acknowledged measure of comparison for quantitative or qualitative value.
"ISO's perspective of standardization is that activity for establishing with regard to actual or potential problems, provisions for common and repeated use, aimed at the achievement of the optimum degree of order in a given context," Blasi says.
He says they are important.
"I don't want to under-emphasize the importance of standards, in that they help raise levels of quality, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchangeability for all involved in a particular process," Blasi says.
The standards, he says, are documented agreements containing technical specifications or other precise criteria. They are used as rules and guidelines to ensure that materials and processes are fit for their intended purposes.
"What they are not," Blasi says, "is they do not have legal status in and of themselves."
They provide a template for bodies to develop standards. Regulators may adopt ISO standards unchanged or modify them to suit local requirements.
"The bottom line is that the intent is to produce standards that are internationally compatible, consistent and clear," Blasi says.
The standards are developed with the consensus of industry, vendors, users, consumer groups, testing laboratories and governments, he says.
"It's a partnership environment," Blasi says. "It's an industry-wide effort."
It's also voluntary.
"These standards are essentially market-driven," he says.
The standards are drawn up and developed by a series of committees and working groups. Some of the committees work at the technical level. Some work at the political level.
In the case of the ISO animal ID committee, representatives are appointed by a national standards body with one vote per country.
The political committee and the working group typically meet once a year. The technical working group, technical experts in the industry, meets four or five times a year. The subcommittee task groups meet as needed.
"One thing that is important is that ISO standards are not static," Blasi says. "They are live documents, and one reason why is there is a process in place for the experts to get together and to hash out issues that may arise as technology changes."
He says new work items are presented at these meetings. There are also periodic reviews of the standards.
"The ISO standards today with respect to the NAIS are basically ISO 11784, ISO 11785, ISO 3166 and ISO 7064," Blasi says.
There is some discussion with respect to ISO 14223 with regard to an advanced transponder.
"The two standards that are really important," Blasi says, "and I think it's important for everybody to spend some time on this — are ISO 11784 and 11785."
He says 11784 represents the code structure, the telegraph-messaging component of the system. ISO 11785 is the technical concept that describes how the transponder must communicate with the receiver or reader.
ISO 11784, Blasi says, represents the data numeric structure of the character code for electronic transponders.
Recent changes included additional information related to duplicate tag numbers, which was requested by the United Kingdom, and species codes, which was requested by the European Union, specifically Italy.
ISO 11785 describes the protocol for transmission of signals between the reader or scanner and the transponder or tag. This standard is further broken down into half-duplex and full-duplex transmissions.
While there were no changes in ISO 11785 at recent meetings, there was a consensus among manufacturers that further refinement and synchronization of readers is needed.
"We're talking milliseconds," Blasi says, "and ensuring that one reader in the proximity of another reader is aware that there may be a transmission occurring."
While ISO 11785 sets the standard for the National Animal Identification System with regard to communication between tag and reader, Blasi says ISO does not have responsibility for determining compliance.
"This is where they hand off under a 1996 agreement to the International Committee for Animal Recording," Blasi says. "Basically, it's an international non-governmental, non-profit organization with the primary mission for standardizing procedures and methods in recording livestock data and also establishing testing procedures for the approval of equipment and methodology."
This essentially revolves around the energy required to activate the tag and the reader and the data transfer back from the tag, or transponder, to the reader.
There are a number of categories in these tests, including laboratory tests and field tests.
While these tests include physical appearance, frequency of the activation field, field strength of the activation field, functional test and timing of the activation field, Blasi says there are some performance parameters that he thinks also ought to be included.
"It took us some time to gain some insights into how well tags work with whatever reader you have out there," Blasi says. "You have tags and readers that are both universally available under both 11785 and 11784."
He says everything should work, because they meet ISO standards.
"Subsequent work that we conducted last year and certainly work that my group has conducted this summer," Blasi says, "shows that there are some significant reader-transponder performance differences."
Those include the orientation of the tag, the read range of the scanner, and read speed.
"The quality of the tag itself," Blasi says, "I think is very important as well."
He says he hopes a chip with molded plastic around it and placed in the ear will last eight or nine months. Tag retention work continues in Montana.
"I think that at this point in time, the weakest link in ISO is that transponders and transceivers are not certified for performance according to the unified standard," Blasi says. "There needs to be a good housekeeping seal on the quality of the products that's produced."
Blasi says that as he understands it, the International Committee for Animal Recording, or ICAR, has standards that are in line to soon become ISO standards. He says several animal identification systems also are being worked on outside the ISO system.
Blasi says performance standards do not exist for any radio frequency identification technology, but the Bovine Working Group came back with some targets.
"They recommended 100 percent best orientation in the laboratory and in a field environment without regard to orientation, 99.5 percent performance," Blasi says. "That's awful high."
Blasi says the working group acknowledged that there was no scientific basis for their recommendations.
"It's important, I think, to develop some sort of performance standards," Blasi says. "By doing so, this technology would be better able to withstand legal challenge and also provide a fair and level playing field for everybody."
Blasi says that with the thousands of transactions that can potentially occur on a daily basis under a National Animal Identification System, to think it can achieve 100 or 99 percent accuracy is not fair to the system.
"We need to look at something being better than nothing," Blasi says.
