Anyone in British Columbia who owns or cares for livestock must register their premises as of July 1 under a mandatory program that helps producers deal with emergencies such as natural disasters or disease outbreaks.
“Most things when they go mandatory, we don’t approve of,” said Kevin Boon, general manager of the B.C. Cattlemen’s Association. “This one, we don’t see a problem with it.”
The British Columbia Premises ID program collects information about the location and type of animals, along with how to contact the people responsible for them. It allows farmers with a registered premises ID to receive notifications when there is an emergency in their area, said a provincial statement June 1.
Read Also
VIDEO: British company Antler Bio brings epigenetics to dairy farms
British company Antler Bio is bringing epigenetics to dairy farms using blood tests help tie how management is meeting the genetic potential of the animals.
More than 1,100 farms in B.C. were under evacuation order or alert due to flooding in November. Hundreds of thousands of animals ranging from poultry to dairy cows were killed.
The federal and B.C. governments announced Feb. 7 that up to $228 million will be provided to producers to help pay for extraordinary expenses from uninsurable damages. A separate program was launched only six months earlier to provide up to $20 million to B.C. producers hit by unprecedented wildfires and heat waves last summer.
“The new, mandatory registration closes an information gap about where farm animals are located when government agencies and industry need to respond quickly to disease and natural disaster emergencies,” said a provincial statement last year.“The new system will also inform whether some livestock and poultry operations can continue operating during emergencies and strengthen the province’s traceability system.”
The premises ID program is available at no cost through online registration, said the provincial statement June 1.
In addition to location, the program makes it easier to identify whether a ranch or farm consists of straight cattle, or a mix of livestock such as beef cattle and poultry or pork and dairy cattle, he said.
B.C.’s beef industry first made extensive use of the program following wildfires in 2017, he added.
The initiative made it easier to map and track things such as when people were being allowed re-entry following an evacuation order, he said. “And it allowed us to track and to utilize those people for fire reporting and stuff like that, so we really saw use in it, and we’ve used it for several other things since.”
It has also been used to inform poultry farmers about highly pathogenic avian influenza cases within 10 kilometres of their property.
