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Beef Verification Solution program makes changes

Published Thursday, July 03, 2008 at 10:30 AM

MANHATTAN – Providing the most comprehensive and competitively priced animal identification and data management program available is behind two recent changes in tag offerings and tag prices through Kansas Farm Bureau’s Beef Verification Solution (BVS) program. “We’re now offering National Animal Identification System (NAIS) compliant ‘840’ radio frequency (RF) eartags.” says Nancy Brown, BVS Network Administrator. “Our goal has always been to provide our members with affordable choices and opportunities to make animal identification pay.”

Use of the NAIS compliant tag is voluntary as is compliance with all other NAIS-based, animal identification protocols. The ‘840’ tags are simply a choice within the Beef Verification Solution program. All other RF tags that were previously available through the program will remain available.

“It’s great that Beef Verification Solution is providing producers with this choice,” says Bryan Rickard, Kansas NAIS Program Manager. “The National Animal Identification System is really just a set of unique and uniform protocols for numbering premises and animals with a goal of improving our ability to mitigate animal diseases. By making the ‘840’ tags readily available, Kansas Farm Bureau is providing a tremendous service to Kansas livestock producers.”

In addition, BVS is decreasing the price of their Temple RF tags by 15 cents per tag. “Being part of a larger network helps us to achieve economies of scale,” says BVS’s Brown. “By working with AgInfoLink, we’re better able to negotiate affordable RF tags and pass those savings on to our members.”

The Beef Verification Solution program offers several different types of both Temple and Allflex RF tags. Currently ‘840’ tags command a premium but RF tags available through BVS, range in price from $1.85 to $2.45 per tag. Data management fees associated with data input, database management and age verification increase overall per head costs to $4.10 to $4.70 (including RF tags).

“I think producers will find that our program is very competitively priced,” says BVS’s Brown. “When you add in the benefits that electronically managed data provides producers from a decision making standpoint, plus the age premiums available in the market place, the Beef Verification Solution program really pays.”

The Beef Verification Solution is one of several programs available through Agriculture Solutions, a division of Kansas Farm Bureau. The Beef Verification Solution is now active in six states, including Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Oklahoma and Mississippi. Interested producers should contact their nearest BVS Verification Center by calling 1-800-406-3053 ext. 6141 or visiting www.agsolusa.com/bvs.

Established in 1919, Kansas Farm Bureau is a non-profit advocacy organization, representing grassroots agriculture and supporting farm families who earn their living in a changing industry.