Springfield, IL – In next year's livestock shows, all animals will need to have the farm they came from registered with the government.
The premises identification number is the first step in a national animal identification system.
4-H staffer Connie Upton says getting a premises identification number from the Department of Agriculture is free, and can be done on the web.
She says the originating farm will make it easier to track the source should a disease show up during a livestock show.
She says as the NAIS progresses, each animal will have a unique identification number.
Those numbers will also make it easier to track animals as they pass from farm to farm or to a livestock show or the slaughterhouse.
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Upton says some 4-H beef and sheep project animals have already been tagged with the radio frequency identification tags, or RFIDs.
Some of the tags are made to be read with a scanner so animals can be idenfified as they move through a chute.
Livestock publications note that unique animal identifiers are likely to become essential for livestock to be exported.
Some nations are insistent that any animals they import be trackable back to the farm where they were born.