Yancy Crozier has traced cattle from Brazil to Botswana and Canada to Kazakhstan.
The international business development and sales manager for Integrated Traceability Solutions has implemented traceability programs for clients in 18 countries but finds that cattle producers in Canada, including his father, still have problems with the idea.
Nevertheless, traceability is becoming a necessity, and Canada lags behind other countries at its peril, he told cattle producers and industry representatives at the Jan. 22 Tiffin Conference in Lethbridge.
“The risk of non-compliance is increasing,” he said.
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“The cost of not having a sufficient system may be severe to consumers, individual companies and governments but more importantly everybody in this room.”
Crozier said traceability for disease outbreaks and regulatory and food safety reasons is one focus, but traceability for differentiation and marketing purposes presents another potentially more attractive aspect for producers.
Retailers are devising new plans for specific beef products, such as antibiotic free or naturally raised, and traceability can help the industry determine where to find those specific products and how much is available.
“Traceability needs to be bundled with other quality assurance attributes to deliver a value to industry. It can’t do it on its own,” said Crozier.
“The demand for end product performance is becoming very significant.”
Crozier envisions a time when producers could use traceability tools and premise identification to verify sustainability, animal welfare standards, environmental responsibility and other aspects of their operations that consumers say will affect their buying decisions.
That means information will have to be available all along the supply chain.
Traceability will require some sort of audit and verification, but it could be vital if Canada is to reach its production and export goals.
It will also require a way to perform multiple integrated audits so that producers aren’t faced with many inspectors, each looking at a different part of the operation.
“As producers, we’ve got to figure how the heck are we going to do this. Does it ever end? Can I not just raise cows? Not any more.”
Crozier said he was recently in Brazil, where the country’s 200 million head cattle herd is projected to double in the next two years.
Participation in its traceability program is voluntary, but the country is now devising a method of charging a tax whenever a bovine moves between states or from any other country into Brazil.
“This is our competitor,” said Crozier.
In Australia, traceability is mandatory and each animal has a lifetime traceable status that requires scanning of radio frequency identification tags at virtually every change of venue.
Data entry in a national database allows worldwide traceability.
In South Korea and Japan, consumers buying meat in a store can scan a bar code and learn everything about the life and death of the animal from which the meat is derived.
“These are the people we compete with, but these are also the people that we supply meat to,” said Crozier.
“Traceability is now the means rather than the end. Let’s use the traceability to collect other information that is now needed through the supply chain to do our job properly.”
barb.glen@producer.com
