Neil Bouray with Mankato Livestock is the newest member of the CattleTrace Board of Directors. He replaces Mike Samples with Farmers and Ranchers Livestock in Salina, who stepped down after serving one year on the board.
“We appreciate Mike’s support of CattleTrace and his role in helping progress the project this past year as a director,” said CattleTrace Program Manager Cassie Kniebel. “The CattleTrace Board of Directors represents the entire beef industry and his input from the livestock market perspective has been valuable in ensuring the program works for all segments.”
Farmers and Ranchers will continue to support CattleTrace by using ultra-high frequency readers to collect data on tagged cattle. Kniebel said continuing to work with Samples’ market will be instrumental to success of the program in central Kansas.
CattleTrace is the state’s industry-driven project for disease traceability. Cattle from cow-calf and stocker operators participating in the program are identified with ultra-high frequency tags that are read at partnering auction markets, feedyards and packing plants. The readers collect the minimal amount of data necessary for disease traceability. Collaborators, including KLA, hope to develop a purpose-built infrastructure for an animal disease traceability system.
The program is approaching the goal of distributing 55,000 tags in Kansas. Additional partners are being sought at the cow-calf and backgrounder levels. Interested ranchers can learn more about the program during upcoming meetings September 17 at Fort Scott and Pratt, and September 19 at Cherokee, OK. For more information, go to www.cattletrace.org.