As sheep were being weighed and checked in preparation for the 66th Annual Madison County 4-H fair, Brittaney Simmons carefully scanned each animal with a device shaped like a rod with an electronic box attached to it.

“I’m checking for the radio frequency identification,” the 22-year old Elwood native said on Saturday afternoon.

Simmons, a graduate student at Purdue University in West Lafayette, is working on a research project in conjunction with a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The project will determine whether animals can continuously carry an RFID tag in them for an extended period of time.

“If something were to go bad in the meat supply, they could trace it to where it was born,” Simmons said.

Madison County is among seven counties — including Steuben, Lake, Putnam , Monroe, Hancock and Whitley — participating in the program.

Simmons said 500 cattle, 500 sheep and 1,000 swine were tagged for the project. The swine were tagged on Saturday, but everything else was done in May, she said.