Pará state faces challenge to track cattle
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In Pará, Brazil, the Agência de Defesa Agropecuária do Pará (Adepará) is working to identify over 26 million cattle and water buffalo, but has only individually identified less than 2% of the herd since launching a traceability program.
The program, aiming for full identification by December 31, 2030, initially missed its goals and required a deadline extension. Currently, 403 agents are responsible for applying both visual and electronic tags to each animal and registering the data in an official system.
To meet the extended deadline, each agent would need to identify approximately 64 animals per workday, considering a 40-hour workweek and around 250 workdays per year. Adepará is training additional agents, and increasing the total number of professionals could reduce the workload per agent, for example, 800 agents would need to identify around 32 animals each day. However, the agency also has 1,028 total staff members who handle a range of responsibilities beyond just cattle traceability.
A key question remains about the scope of the identification goal. It is unclear whether the program requires tagging the entire herd or only animals that are being transported for breeding, fattening, or slaughter. If the goal applies only to animals in transit, around 20.2 million in 2025, the daily workload for each agent would decrease to approximately 50 animals.
Adepará plans to release a new directive clarifying the program’s methodology, but had not done so as of the article’s publication. Jamir Macedo, president of the managing council of the Pará Sustainable Livestock program, stated that producers are not necessarily required to hire agents, as farm workers can also perform the identification tasks.
