OT - a simple question

I asked a simple question yesterday about micro-chipping livestock in Uruguay. Apparently someone posted a response that got the whole post poofed. So I did online research and found that the answer is : Tradition! Historians agree the hot branding of livestock started in Uruguay long ago and spread throughout the world. Uruguay has gone high tech and now uses micro-chips to brand cattle.

Further research found that micro-chipping is required in many countries, including Australia, according to Wikipedia. Apparently, the U.S. is lagging behind in this practice. Chip manufacturers make the chips smaller than a grain of rice and are claiming that their chips are now "affordable", although they do not quote prices, probably because they are claiming to be global suppliers. Anyway, I guess rustlers won't know if livestock is chipped or not if they don't have a chip reader.

Interesting, the idea of chipping a herd, but then what's the cost of doing business when rustlers or poachers are involved. As far as costs go, it might not be so expensive. I remember years ago someone, I think Coke was chipping cans or six packs for some sort of contest or something and they'd show up at your house and knock on the door and you'd win something, maybe another six pack. I thought that must ne expensive, but they did it and like most business owners, not in the business to lose money.

True story. 1983 or so I was stationed at Ft. Hood in Texas. Amongst other things, Ft. Hood is or was where the beef was raised for the Army mess halls. One pay day a few fellas in my company piled into one of their Ford Thunderbirds, went out and bought some booze, got tanked up, drove out onto a range, killed a steer, lopped off a leg, lit a fire and were barbequing it right there with the rest of the steer lying nearby as the MP's rode up horseback. They saw the fire out on the range in the darkness, and that was the end of those guys. They ended up going to Ft. Leavenworth for that one. Wasn't an Article 15 or anything like that. Was a Courts Martial, and they got convicted.

Mark

The idea of chipping cattle/livestock has been around for about 10 years or so. The cost of the chips is getting lower. The real cost was the readers. They are also getting lower as computer hardware cost are going lower.

Now the issues I feel are the trouble with them. Yes they would provide SOME benefits to the farmer/rancher/own. Easy documentation of animals and the ability to track animals. These are really small for most mid west producers. My cattle are in confided areas and ear tags already provide the ability for record keeping.

The down side is I see the packers demanding these electronic records on every single head you ship to them. Then they would use these records to ding individual cattle for some reason and drop the price on those selected animals. Next would be some Federal agency "requiring" chips and Federal access to all of your records in the name of food safety.

Truthfully my livestock is kind of like your money in the bank. Really not anyone's business. Inspections at the slaughter houses is good enough to catch 98% of anything that could cause issues. The other thing this MIGHT help in is a very small risk. The odds of government interference is higher to me than the benefits.

I remember being required to read the book "Brave New World" for a college class years ago. I was deeply bothered by many of the things in that book. Now many of those things are reality. Many of the "Government" controls talked about in the book are here today. The technology for many of the other things would be possible today as well. These chips are sort of like some of that stuff to me.

Are chips in all citizens next????? I could see it being sold as a way to help medical record keeping. How would you like to have a chip Keeping "track" of all your health care issues??? You can't take any meds without a reader reading "your" chip and then dispensing your daily/hourly meds??? I could see it being sold as a way to stop prescription drugs being used by the "wrong" people. I know these ideas sound paranoid or even crazy but I do not trust electronic data. It can be easily collected by those who really should never need or have it.

They should have gone to jail too stupid to get the tenderloin.

You are not paranoid if somebody is REALLY after you.

Most other manufacturing industries have long relied on bar codes, radio ID, micro chips, etc. to track and control inventory. The systems are very similar to the package tracking systems used by UPS, FedEx, and USPS. The costs are much lower than manual tracking and information on any single part, lot or shipment is available in seconds. When there are any problems, it easy to trace individual parts back to the original suppliers down to the lot number and the date they were made.

In many other countries the food industries use these systems too. In my humble opinion, so far the US food industry wants nothing what-so-even to do with that level of accountability.

actually your post is still there
just can't read it in classic but can in modern
I did bring that to the mods attn down in the comment section

It is extremely rare for me to ever go to Modern View. Wonder why it shows up one place and not another?

it still shows in classic just can't read it
but if ya go to modern you can then clik n read
that was my question to the mods
go down to site comments let them know you posted in classic
as he thought you posted it in modern and that the potty filter might have kicked it from classic

JD-not trying to hijack the thread, but your comments on chipping people reminded me of a recent medical "advance" that was being hyped by the news media. The gist was that there is now a chip with a bio-activated (non-harmful) battery that is small enough to be installed in pills. When the battery is activated by gastric juices, it emits a very low powered radio signal to a patch-like "smart device" that is glued onto your body. The body worn device "logs" the event (pill type/dose/time/etc.) which is then downloaded to a medical computer at some interval to be certain that YOU are taking YOUR prescribed pills at the proper time. Obvious benefits, but (like most things) certainly potential for abuse.

We've been using rfid tags here in Canada for maybe 10+ years,they're good except the plug wears over time and falls apart.

I think I was still in high school when they had tags with rfid so a computer could id a cow coming into the parlor and log her production. How useful, costly, or effective it was, I don't know.

One thing rarely talked about, is how easy it is to fool the equipment or make fake tags. A couple hundred dollars of equipment will allow you to read and copy credit card info onto another card discreetly.

Texas instruments and the credit card companies said no,
youre not gonna do the show