Gerald Ricketts knows that the days of tracking cattle with high-tech radio-frequency tags will arrive soon.

Companies looking to corner the market are lining up.

“Look around here and there are 25 booths with ear tags, all wanting to sell something for cattle identification,” Ricketts said Friday, working in the Kansas Limousin Assn. booth at Kansas State University in Manhattan. “Everyone’s trying to sell something and trying to say their deal is a little bit better.”

Longtime cattlemen such as Ricketts, of Clay County, were among the more than 1,000 attendees for Friday’s 93rd annual Cattlemen’s Day, where they had the chance to review cutting-edge products, hear economic forecasts and study issues affecting beef, the state’s largest agricultural industry.

One presentation addressed the development of animal identification systems, drawing interest from 400 attendees.

Being able to identify each animal – whether it’s a horse, hog or steer – using radio-frequency ear tags would bolster security in the nation’s food chain, said Chris Reinhardt, who moderated the session as K-State’s statewide extension feedlot specialist.

A confirmed case of foot-and-mouth disease or other highly contagious problem in an animal would stand the best chance of being contained if such a system were in place, he said. Officials could know within a day or even an hour which other animals had been exposed to the infected animal.

Not now.

“Today : it would take something like six days to positively identify all the animals,” Reinhardt said. “It would eventually cost the industry $8 billion to $9 billion, in terms of all the animals that would need to be quarantined and destroyed.”

Such tags carry other benefits, said Bill Wood, Douglas County’s ag extension agent, who attended Friday’s event. Such tracking can give producers data about which of their animals command the highest prices at the packing plant.

That could lead to more focused breeding, making a producer’s future cattle all the more valuable.

“You can make money by doing this,” he said.