Identification and traceability are fundamentally crucial to Australia’s livestock industries. They provide essential support to market access, biosecurity, disease control, improving production and animal health and welfare. The current identification and traceability systems have served the industries well however, they rely on old technologies and systems. Brands, earmarks, and tattoos have been around for many years, but may not be legible for the duration of the animal’s life. Visual ear tags can degrade over time and can have retention issues. Electronic devices can fail and have retention issues.
iTRAK is adapting existing retinal scanning technology for livestock identification and traceability. Retinas are like fingerprints; every retina is unique. Retinas do not change, and therefore provide a complete whole-of-life traceability system. This technology is underpinned by a cloud-based database
that will allow for variable connectivity, maintaining a lifetime record of each animal.
