It is a chance to introduce a tag that adds value by enabling fast, accurate and effortless product tracing for food safety or biosecurity reasons indicating the farm of origin complies with velvet, welfare and food safety rules.
The new system of tracing tagged velvet as it moves through the supply chain will support the premium market positioning of NZ velvet by allowing branding to be added and reducing the risk of counterfeiting.
Sayer said the tracing will also help farmers, vets and other businesses in the velvet supply chain with their inventory management, which will become virtually paperless.
If the concept is supported each stick of velvet will be identifiable through a central database to the farm of origin from the 2020-21 season.
Several prototype tags have been piloted by Southland NZ Deer Farmers’ Association members and the three largest velvet exporters.
Their feedback and that of the National Velvet Standards Board (NVSB) has been used to make some first-stage refinements.
“The best format appears to be an artificial paper wrist-band similar to that used in past years by the Elk-Wapiti Society,” Sayer said.
In the 2019-20 season a bar-coded version will replace the cable tie but existing tag distribution, recording, paperwork and VSD requirements won’t change.
“If this works well we will look to roll out a fully electronic system with electronic chips in similar-style tags for the 2020-21 season.
“Only then would record-keeping requirements and methods change.”
The selection and design of the 2019-20 tag is being finalised. Once that is done DINZ will advise on the use of remaining stocks of cable ties.
The 2020-21 wrist-band tags will contain a bar code and a UHF chip, each with unique numbers that will be paired with each other on a database administered by DINZ.
“UHF chips have been chosen not only because they are cheap but because when there are large volumes of sticks of velvet in a consignment or container they can be read at once, enabling depots and pack houses to read tags quickly and accurately.
The bar code will enable voluntary on-farm stick-by-stick scanning using kit already found on farm, such as smartphones or other bar-code readers.
The stick’s bar code could then be associated with other information entered into a farm management system such as the stick’s weight and grade and the stag’s NAIT tag.
Farmers won’t have to do any tag scanning or noting of numbers.
“Farmers would no longer be required to keep paper records of tags received, applied or transferred. Nor would they have to produce paper VSDs.”
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Garmers, deer vets, buyers, graders, exporters, processors and marketers can read a fact sheet at www.deernz.org/velvet-traceability
