Effect of intraperitoneal electronic identification on productive performance of Sardinian suckling lambs

Abstract

The electronic identification could represent a further step to improve the traceability of meat, considering that, starting from the 1st of January 2008, this method will be compulsory in the whole EU (Reg. CE n. 21/2004). The “Agnello di Sardegna” is a Protected Geographic Identification product (Provv. 13/03/2001) and it has to match up a series of requirements, such as the identification of animals in 20 days time from birth. In a previous work, Pinna et al. (2004) showed the results of a survey carried out for the development of the intraperitoneal identification systems in lambs. In the present work, the effects on the main productive in vivo and post mortem performance are taken into account.

Keywords

• electronic identification, lambs, productive performance