The French bovine identification and traceability system, updated with the technology of RFID.

From 1998, individual identification and traceability became essential for major cattle breeding countries. In France st arting i n the 70’s, al l the premi ses and the cattl e were i dentified as earl y as 1978. The national system is managed by the Ministry of Agriculture with the responsibilities of the regional farmers’ organisations. There are 8 mil lions of bi rths per year, 25 milli ons of movements and 6 mill ions of slaughters for 280 000 bovine farmers. In the slaughterhouses, an own traceability system is applied, based on an order number of slaughter for each ani mal, carcass quarters and mai n cuts of meat. An accurate l abelling of each piece of carc ass gathers all the information, transferred electronically by the national identification system. At first the development of software on PDA hel ped the record and controls of data on the fi eld and now the RFID ear tags on the animals can still improve the quality of data at all levels of the production line : on the farm, on the market, in the slaughterhouse. The succ ess of such a s ystem de pends on t echnological aspe cts but al so on the organi sation of the national system to ensure reliability and efficiency.