Canada's federal government continues to move towards mandatory livestock traceability by 2011, but questions are being raised about the approach for tracking the country's cattle herd.
"Everyone recognizes we have to go there," says Canada's Agriculture Minister Gerry Ritz, who adds that countries such as Japan and South Korea are demanding greater traceability of livestock. He notes for cattle over 30 months of age, having a database of the exact age and locations of the cattle will make a huge difference.
The federal government has put up C$25 million dollars to help the cattle industry adapt and prepare for the new regulations that are coming in a year's time. Some funding has gone into the purchase and testing of radio frequency identification tag readers at auction marts across the country. The purpose is to see how well the livestock can be traced as they move through the auction mart and whether it can be done without slowing down business.
But Brad Wildeman, president of the Canadian Cattlemen's Association, believes tracing cattle through the auction marts is not the right approach. "If we believe that we're going to open up international markets and use it (traceability) to facilitate trade and increase our sales in some of these countries, then we need to change our focus," says Wildeman. Instead, he says traceability needs to occur at the production sites. "A Japanese consumer cares about where those animals were fed and cared for, not whether they got sold in Yorkton, Sask. or Kelvington, Sask.," Wildeman said.
The CCA is also worried about the reliability of the RFID tag reading technology. "This technology today isn't fool proof. We know there are lost tags, we know there are tags that don't read," he says. "This idea that we're going to have mandatory traceability of 100 percent of the cattle, 100 percent of the time, simply isn't achievable with the technology we have today."
