For Immediate Release 1/24/03

 The Sandhills Cattle Association of Valentine NE has chosen APEIS Inc. to create “Sandhills Cattle Trax^TM,” a system to be made available to its members for individual animal tracking, utilizing electronic identification and data collection/ management services.

 The Sandhills Cattle Association (SCA) has contracted with APEIS Inc., a technology based company located in Norfolk NE, to provide “Sandhills Cattle Trax^TM”, a state-of-the-art electronic identification tracking and data management system for the member/producers of the SCA. The Association decided on the Trax system to offer its members a wider variety of marketing possibilities in the ever-changing cattle industry.

 The Trax system will be built to allow SCA producers to individually manage data on their respective herds while creating a brandable, source-verifiable, individually electronically identified supply of cattle.  SCA producers will also be able to benchmark their animals to others within the SCA system utilizing revolutionary technology developed by APEIS. “Through the use of electronic identification tags, the SCA producers will also benefit from our patent-pending “Pre-Records” tag ordering and processing services built into the system” says Van H. Neidig, President/CEO of APEIS. “Sandhills Cattle Trax^TM will enable compliance with the new voluntary Country of Origin Labeling guidelines as well as assist in meeting the demands of asset management.”

 “Before making this decision, the SCA board of directors held several lengthy and candid discussions about EID, the APEIS proposal, as well as other proposals,” says Larry Gran, SCA President. “The directors chose to go with APEIS because they felt it was the best fit with the SCA and its members.  The board of directors elected to enter into this agreement because of the changes occurring in the beef industry that will, no doubt, significantly affect each and every beef producer.”

The Sandhills Cattle Association, made up of nearly 500 members, collectively markets over 200,000 head of cattle annually.  "The system will debut in the first quarter of 2003 with the official launch of http://www.sandhillscattletrax.com/" says Ronna Morse, SCA manager, "and in the coming weeks we will release guidelines for the program and organize training sessions for Association members."

 For more information, contact:

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