SPOLM 2007 ISSN 1806-3632 Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 8 e 9 de novembro de 2007 RFID IN THE INTERNATIONAL CATTLE CHAIN: TRACEABILITY, CONTEXT AND LEGISLATION Priscilla Cristina Cabral Ribeiro DEPRO/EM/UFOP, DEP/UFSCar Emails: priscri@terra.com.br, priscilla@depro.em.ufop.br , priscilla@dep.ufscar.br *Annibal José Scavarda School of Management Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University Australia Email: annibal@rdc.puc-rio.br Mário Otávio Batalha GEPAI/DEP/UFSCar Email: dmob@power.ufscar.br Abstract The aim of this paper is to describe the use of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in the live cattle supply chain in Australia, Canada, Europe, Japan, and in The United States. The global markets, mainly the European and Chinese markets, demand traceability to control quality and food safety. For operations, as production and processing, RFID has been used in some countries. This research uses a qualitative method based on documents, scientific papers, and secondary data from those countries. Nowadays, another problem appears: the privacy of the consumer. This issue represents a big problem to the companies and countries that use RFID, which have to do some laws and discuss a lot about this issue and evaluate its costs and benefits. Keywords: Information Technology, meat chain, traceability, RFID. Introdução A rastreabilidade pode ser entendida como “a capacidade de detectar a origem e de seguir o rastro de um gênero alimentício, de um alimento para animais, de um animal produtor de gêneros alimentícios ou de uma substância, destinados a serem incorporados a * Corresponding author