STAR is "The System for Tracking Animal Resources", an identification system for livestock in East Africa to track animals, control disease, prevent theft, and facilitate trade and marketing. The system uniquely identifies an animal and its associated history (ownership, health, location) and tracks it through various phases of its life using RFID (radio frequency Identification). The other components of the system are RFID readers (handheld, handheld PDAs for data collection, a global positioning system (GPS) unit and a communications device to enable the sending of scanned, updated information from the handheld device back to a centralized database via a cellular phone (GSM) network wherever there is coverage.