Radio frequency identification of animals, the quality of products in the field.

In several parts of the world livestock animals (sheep, goats and cattle) are identified with radiofrequency identification (RFID) devices. These transponders can be read with handheld and stationary readers. The reading can be performed on the farm, during transport, in the sales yard and in the slaughterhouse. Especially when the RFID tags are read with a static reader the signal strength the transponders produce is very important (reading distance shall be sufficient if animal passes the reader). If the signal is insufficient it can result in misreads. In many countries RFID tags have to meet certain approval criteria to get allowance for use for identifying a certain species with those tags. The approval is mostly based upon tests that are performed by test agencies on new tags that the manufacturer has send to the test agency. The tags the manufacturer later on sell on the market can have a different quality as the original tested product or the quality of the RFID tags can be influenced by environmental conditions e.g. moisture. The reduced quality can increase the misread percentage. In the most RFID schemes there are no checks performed that safeguard the quality of the products sold on the marked. Schemes that monitor the quality of RFID products on the market could be introduced. This monitoring could e.g. be based upon RFID sample tags that are collected during slaughter. When a certain percentages of the recovered tags are outside specification the manufacturer should improve the quality of his product. If the manufacturer e.g. within a year does not succeed to improve the quality of that product approval for that product could be withdrawn.