IN a small shed on a block of land outside the Mary Valley township of Amamoor, something that benefits the nation’s cattle industry is being “watched” by the rest of the world.

After an exhaustive approval process, sales and marketing manager for Datamars Tim Scott, has been accepted by NLIS (National Livestock Identification System) to print and program tags.

The huge benefit to the nation and cattle produces using the now mandatory tags is that if a cow is detected with a disease, the tag identifies where the animal has been and what other animals with which it has been in contact and that in turn means the animals can be isolated and that gets producers back into the market as soon as possible.

“A lot of other countries are watching what’s going on in Australia.”

The Amamoor tag printing plant is the second in Queensland and there is a third in Victoria.

It programs and prints 1.1 million tags each month, which is 10 per cent of the market and according to Tim “very, very big business”.

“The machine that programs and prints the tags does 300 per hour for the Australian market.

“Australia is leading the world in electronic identification.”

Mr Scott said the tags have further potential when you think of the 80 million sheep that Australia produces.

“One of the problems with existing tags is that they can fall out but we’ve not had one complaint [about the Rumitags].

Datamars does not limit its tags to cattle - they also make tags for dogs and cats and believe it or not for hotel linen.

The Swiss based micro technology company’s electronic engineer Giuliano Piano is currently visiting the Amamoor plant where Mr Scott employs locals Robyn and Candace Mills.