ICAR certified RFID ear tag ISO 11784 11785 is a phrase that turns up in Indian tender specifications, procurement emails and supplier catalogues alike. It is also one of the very few certification claims in this industry a buyer can verify personally, from a public register, in about two minutes.
Two problems sit inside the phrase. The first is that “ICAR approved” is not ICAR’s own terminology — it issues registration and certification, two different things with two different lifespans, and the gap between them is where buyers lose money. The second is that in India, “ICAR” usually means a completely different organisation.
First question: which ICAR?
To most people in Indian agriculture, ICAR is the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, the national agricultural research body. It has nothing to do with animal-transponder certification.
The ICAR that certifies ear tags is the International Committee for Animal Recording, at icar.org — the body ISO appointed as Registration Authority for ISO 11784 and ISO 11785 on 22 June 2007, according to ICAR’s own Section 10 guidelines (consulted 3 October 2026). It allocates the manufacturer and product codes that sit inside an ISO 11784 animal ID number, and runs the conformance testing behind them.
So the first question to a supplier is: which ICAR, and can you show me the entry?
What ICAR actually issues
ICAR’s Section 10 guideline overview on the testing and certification of animal identification devices (consulted 3 October 2026) defines its services separately. They are not interchangeable, and quoting one while implying another is the commonest problem here.
| ICAR service | What it is | What it proves |
|---|---|---|
| Registration | ICAR’s own definition: “the granting of shared/unshared manufacturer codes and unique product codes as defined in ISO 11784” | A code exists — nothing about current test status |
| Conformance testing (ISO 24631-1) | Demonstration that transponders meet ISO 11784 and ISO 11785, at an ICAR-selected test centre. ICAR states submission is obligatory before devices can be used in the official identification of animals | The electronics conform; ICAR issues the certificate as Registration Authority on behalf of ISO |
| Certification / re-certification | A service ICAR describes as “additional to the registration of devices, with 5 year validity”; re-certification covers devices whose certification has expired after five years | The device was certified — and the certificate has a clock on it |
| Performance testing (ISO 24631-3) | Modulation amplitude, bit length stability, minimum activation field strength, resonance frequency, amplitude voltage response (Vss) | Useful behaviour data, but ICAR states these results are not subject to pass or fail criteria |
| Composition and environmental performance | A separate laboratory procedure, with different routes for conventional plastic ear tags and for external RFID devices | How the plastic survives years outdoors — not the same certificate as electronics conformance |
| Voluntary sampling | A quality-verification service ICAR offers to Competent Authorities and other service users, not to manufacturers — market samples retested against current protocols | That devices actually on the market still match what was certified. ICAR states it does not lead to re-certification |
Two consequences. A performance report is not a certification, however good the numbers look. And electronic conformance says nothing about whether the tag body survives sun, mud and rubbing — that is the composition and environmental test, asked for far less often than it should be.
The trap: a lifetime register and a five-year certificate
This is the part nobody explains, and the reason a buyer can do everything right and still be wrong. ICAR publishes its certified devices on listing pages — one for RFID devices, one for conventional ear tags — and its guideline states that devices whose certification has expired are removed from those pages. A separate page registers devices in conformance with ISO 11784 and ISO 11785, and works the other way: entries there are not removed, because, in ICAR’s words, registration “is valid for the lifetime of the device.”
So a product can sit in the conformance register indefinitely while its five-year certificate has quietly lapsed. Finding a model name on a list at icar.org is not the same as finding it currently certified. Know which list you are reading, and read the dates.
There is a timing wrinkle worth knowing if a certificate is close to expiry. ICAR’s re-certification procedure requires the manufacturer to submit the product no earlier than six months and no later than five months before the certificate expires; apply more than five years after the original certification and the full test procedures are required again. A supplier who has let that window pass is facing a full retest, not a renewal.
The two-minute check
The conformance register is published as a table, and its fields tell you what to ask for: manufacturer, manufacturer code, product code RFID, product name, description, technology (FDX-B or HDX), product type — ear tag, leg tag, ruminal bolus, injectable transponder — a photograph, registration date, range of digits RFID, RFID performance date, retest date, sector, species, notes, an active flag and an expiry date. ICAR’s certified-device list carries two further fields the register does not: fully certified date and fully re-certified date. Run the check in this order:
- Ask for three strings in writing: manufacturer name as registered, manufacturer code, product code. A supplier who produces these is almost certainly telling the truth; one who offers a scanned PDF instead is the one to slow down with.
- Search the manufacturer, not the brand. Private-label tags are registered to whoever submitted them for testing, which may not be the name on your quotation — normal in this trade, but it means you need that other name.
- Match the product code to the exact item quoted. Certification attaches to a device, not to a catalogue or a company. While you are there, check the range of digits allocated to that product against the numbering your scheme expects.
- Read the dates on the right list. A row in the conformance register tells you registration is in place; current certification is what the certified-device list and its fully certified date tell you. Confirm it is current rather than historic.
- Check technology and species against your animals and against the readers you already own.
One caveat on method: the pages we examined on 3 October 2026 present as published tables of entries rather than a queryable index, so not finding a name is weaker evidence than finding one — treat absence as a question for the supplier, not a verdict. Indian manufacturers do appear: Tvasta ID India Private Ltd. and Omnia Technologies Pvt. Ltd. were both visible on shared code 900.
What the manufacturer code quietly tells you
Code 900 is shared. ICAR grants it on successful conformance testing and, in its own description, allocates with it a set of one million identification codes restricted for the manufacturer’s exclusive use. Codes 901–998 are unshared, and ICAR grants one only against official proof that the company has sold a minimum of one million ICAR-certified transponders per year during two consecutive years.
An unshared code is therefore incidentally a volume disclosure. But 900 is not a lesser certification — it is the normal entry point, and plenty of properly certified devices sit there permanently. Do not let a vendor use a three-digit number as a status symbol, and do not discount a 900 supplier because of it.
What suppliers claim, and what each claim is worth
| The claim as written | What it actually establishes | What to ask next |
|---|---|---|
| ”ICAR approved tags” | Nothing specific — not ICAR’s terminology | Which service: conformance, registration, or environmental test? |
| ”ICAR member” | Committee membership, not device certification — and at least one supplier site we read uses this exact wording | The product code and certificate for the item quoted |
| ”ISO 11784/11785 compliant” | The supplier’s own statement | The ISO 24631-1 conformance certificate and the test centre’s report |
| ”Registered with ICAR” | A manufacturer and product code exist, valid for the device’s lifetime | The fully certified date, and whether certification is current |
| ”ICAR certified, certificate no. X, product code Y” | Something checkable | Nothing — go and check the row |
Keep the LF and UHF layers strictly apart
ISO 11784/11785 is a low-frequency animal-identification standard. ISO 11785 defines two signalling methods — FDX-B and HDX — on a 134.2 kHz carrier, read out as a 15-digit number and coupling inductively, so it works close in and copes with hide, tissue and body fluid. That is the layer ICAR certifies, which is why the register has a column for which of the two a device uses.
EPC Gen2 — ISO/IEC 18000-63, marketed as RAIN RFID — is passive UHF only, running in India on the licence-exempt 865–868 MHz band set by G.S.R. 853(E) of 10 December 2021. Different standard family, different physics, and an ISO 11784/11785 conformance certificate has nothing to say about it.
Which makes an “ICAR certified UHF Gen2 ear tag” a category error; the generous reading is that two datasheets got merged. Decide your band by how you will actually read animals — one at a time in a crush, or hands-free through a gate — using our cattle ear tag guide and the RFID frequencies explainer, then ask for evidence appropriate to that band.
Is ICAR certification actually required in India?
Be careful here, because this is where specifications get written on assumption.
Start with what the national programme actually specifies. Department of Animal Husbandry and Dairying material on Bharat Pashudhan, the national livestock database built with NDDB, describes the animal’s identity as a 12-digit bar-coded ear tag — a printed barcode carrying a number, not an RFID chip. We found no basis for asserting that a national RFID animal-tagging mandate exists in India, and will not imply one. We have also left the widely circulated registration totals off this page: the figures we could find disagree with one another and we could not reach a primary source for them.
ICAR’s own position is narrower than “required in India” and stronger than optional: it states that submitting transponders to conformance testing is obligatory before they can be used in the official identification of animals. That is ICAR’s rule for official identification, not a provision of Indian law, so the real question is whether your scheme’s identification counts as official in that sense — and only the scheme can answer it. ICAR points at who should: it defines a Competent Authority as the “ministry or organisation responsible for national animal identification schemes.”
So ask the scheme, in writing, whether it requires ICAR-certified devices, and put it in the tender BoQ only once it has answered. Specifying a certification nobody requires narrows your supplier list and raises your price for nothing.
Where Identium stands, plainly
Identium does not hold ICAR certification. We checked the register for our own name on 3 October 2026 and there is no Identium entry. Our certifications are BIS, plus WPC approval for our UHF readers and antennas on India’s licence-exempt UHF RFID band. We do not hold CE, FCC, RoHS, REACH, ISO 9001 or ISO 14001 either, as set out on CE and FCC certification for RFID tags.
What we manufacture in New Delhi is the tag itself: two-piece TPU livestock animal ear tags, laser-marked rather than ink-printed so the number outlasts the weather and encoded to your own herd or scheme numbering, with the readers and antennas around them on our livestock tracking page.
Older copy elsewhere on this site used the phrase “ICAR approved tags.” That wording is inaccurate by the standard set out above, we are correcting it, and we would rather say so here than let it stand. The accurate description of the LF product is a tag built to ISO 11784/11785 FDX-B at 134.2 kHz. If your scheme does require ICAR-certified devices, we will tell you so and point you at a manufacturer in the register — a better outcome than a cheap tag your Competent Authority rejects. Apply the same test to every supplier, including us: see choosing an RFID tag manufacturer.
The checklist, in one place
- Which ICAR — the International Committee for Animal Recording, or the Indian Council of Agricultural Research?
- Which service: ISO 24631-1 conformance certificate, registration, performance report, or composition and environmental test?
- Manufacturer name as registered, manufacturer code, product code — in writing, then verify the row yourself.
- Which list you are reading: registration is lifetime, certification runs five years and expired devices come off the certified pages.
- Technology (FDX-B or HDX), product type and species, matched to the readers you own.
- ISO 11784/11785 is LF on a 134.2 kHz carrier — never accept it as evidence for a Gen2 UHF tag.
- Confirmation from the scheme, in writing, that certification is required at all.
Related reading
- RFID cattle ear tags in India — LF versus UHF for a herd, and how tag IDs line up with official numbers.
- BIS and WPC compliance for RFID in India — the two approvals that do decide whether Indian reader hardware is legal.
- Do RFID tags need CE or FCC certification? — how to tell a test report, a declaration and a regulator’s grant apart.