Demands from retailers | Program sets out specific criteria, including a birth date for every animal
Traceability and age verification are part of doing business for the owners of Spring Creek Ranch Premium Beef.
“Our retailers that handle our product, they want to know everything we can realistically give them,” said Mike Kotelko, whose family started the branded beef program in 2003 at Vegreville, Alta.
The program sets out specific criteria for suppliers, including a birth date for every animal.
“We think it is a positive part of product differentiation.”
The family also owns the 36,000 head Highland Feeders but does not pay a premium for age verified calves. However, the feedlot tends to feed weaned calves, so it knows they are youthful.
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Kotelko said many international customers still demand that Canada sell them beef from cattle younger than 30 months to prevent the possible spread of BSE, which occurs in older animals. Food safety requirements for processing older animals are exacting and costly because certain body parts thought to harbour BSE must be removed and destroyed.
“We have not had a significant issue with over 30 month cattle,” he said.
“They are a significant cost to us when we do get them.”
Some animals ended up being more mature than the Kotelkos thought they would be when they bought yearlings off grass without known birth dates.
“We seemed to have had more issues when we bought groups of heifers off of grass. Sometimes those cattle have quite a bit of age on them.”
Age verification, which has been mandatory in Alberta since 2009, is often associated with traceability and animal identification, but Katherine Altman of Alberta Agriculture’s traceability division said it is really a value added attribute to help open more markets after BSE shut Canada out of international trade in 2003.
“Age verification is not a pillar of traceability. It is a value added component that we utilize to gain and maintain access to markets,” she said.
David Chalack, chair of the Alberta Livestock and Meat Agency, said age verification administered by the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency continues to be important. He said Canada should have used its electronic identification system and birth date database to greater advantage when it tried to expand access to Japan.
“We think this protocol could have worked to Canada’s advantage much greater if our negotiators had stuck to actual birth dates rather than dentition because now we are in the same boat as the U.S. There is no differentiation,” he said.
Dentition is used to estimate cattle’s age by checking the number of permanent teeth. Cattle with at least one of the second set of incisors is considered older than 30 months.
“Through negotiating market access, Canada could have held this to a higher standard,” he said.
“Having the under 30 (months) verified actual birth date would have been to Canada’s advantage.”
Chalack said the real value is in the international marketplace.
“You have to look at which realm you are dealing with and because 50 percent of the beef produced here in Canada must be exported, then we need to find markets like Japan that is really concerned about age and the BSE situation,” he said.
“It would be very much to our advantage to have that mandatory age verification.”
However, Canada Beef Inc. chair Chuck MacLean, who recently returned from a trade mission to Japan, is dubious.
“They like age verification, but they will take dentition,” said MacLean, a cattle producer and feedlot owner from Bow Island, Alta.
He said Canada had difficulty finding enough cattle year round that fit the age requirement before Japan expanded access to cattle younger than 21 months from younger than 30 months. Registration of birth dates was about 78 percent, he said.
“(Alberta) thought it was going to move product. They never enforced that law,” he said.
His recent conversations with Japanese meat buyers revealed they wanted high quality product that is priced competitively.
“We asked them what the value of traceability was and two of them said, ‘zero,’ ” he said.
They want to know the country of origin but other information is superfluous, he added.
“That matters because there are people behind the scenes pushing that traceability is going to get your product moved into these countries and these guys said it doesn’t matter,” he said.
“They liked that we had age verification and we could actually check the age, but they didn’t believe they need to know where it actually came from.”
Kevin Boon, manager of the British Columbia Cattlemen’s Association, said Alberta’s mandatory age verification rules affect his province because such a large percentage of cattle are finished and processed there.
“It was never really mandatory for us, but when Alberta made it mandatory we had more voluntary,” he said.
Some B.C. producers had considered age verification to be an advantage beyond trying to gain access to certain markets such as Japan.
However, that advantage evaporated when Alberta made it mandatory.
“They probably did a disservice to the industry because it took away that opportunity for producers who were doing it to be paid for it,” he said.
“When they make it mandatory, everybody has to do the work and nobody gets paid for it.”
Dan Darling, chair of the Ontario Cattlemen’s Association, said there was a problem sourcing cattle for Japan on a regular basis under the province’s age verification program because some producers entered birth dates and others didn’t bother.
Processors used dentition when birth dates were in doubt, which led to some disputes.
“The government said age verification trumps dentition, but they forgot to tell the inspectors,” Darling said.
Producers complained that age verified cattle would be rejected if they had their permanent lower teeth.
Darling said Ontario producers were paid $5 per electronic ear tag if they age verified their cattle, but participation was disappointing and the program was phased out.
Members of the cattlemen’s association voted for a mandatory program, but the provincial government rejected it.
“Unless it is made mandatory federally, it won’t be made mandatory here in Ontario,” Darling said.
“I think the numbers being age verified will just float all over the place.”
Age verification still has its place because consumers want more information about the product. It might also be useful if growth promoting implants or ractopamine are disallowed. The age of hormone free cattle could be disputed because it takes them longer to achieve market weight.
There is no cost to age verify cattle, but producers weren’t paid extra for age verified calves.
“That has always been a bee under the bonnet of a lot of producers is that they are not getting any more for them, but I liken it to vaccinations,” he said.
“Do producers get more for vaccinating their calves or do the ones that are vaccinated get a little bit less? I don’t know.”
