The National Milk Producers Federation has submitted comments supporting the USDA’s proposal on the use of Radio Frequency Identification Tags, RFIDs. USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service proposes RFID tags as Official Identification in cattle and bison.

NMPF President and CEO Jim Mulhern said, "A national animal identification system can provide immediate access to relevant information in an animal disease or food safety crisis that could endanger the entire dairy chain, while protecting farmers' privacy."

The U.S. dairy industry has long advocated modernizing animal ID and disease traceability systems.

Farmer organizations, including NMPF, formed a group called IDairy to collectively advance official mandatory animal identification to aid disease traceability.

IDairy in received a USDA-APHIS cooperative agreement on premise registration and animal ID education that propelled the use of RFID tags in the U.S. dairy industry.

Since 2009, the National Dairy FARM Program, Farmers Assuring Responsible Management, has also recommended use of official RFID tags for all dairy cattle.

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