Recovering stray or stolen livestock could be easier if the police were allowed to use the information attached to cattle electronic ear tags.
Alberta Beef Producers passed a resolution last week asking for livestock investigators to have better access to information stored by the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency.
RCMP officers may have difficulty tracking down the owners of strays or stolen animals, Cpl. Andrew Granger, an RCMP livestock investigator in northern Alberta, told the Dec. 5-7 ABP annual meeting in Calgary.
He regularly receives CCIA tag numbers, but that information is confidential.
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“At this point I have no way of accessing it,” he said. “If we are going to go through charges with this information, I would have to write a warrant and submit it to CCIA to get the information that way.”
Opening the database to law en-forcement or other legal entities would require support from all of the country’s livestock associations, said CCIA chair Mark Elford. The agency is bound by an agreement that was made when it was formed to not share producer information.
However, the CCIA can access the information and contact registered owners. Producers were promised when the system was first introduced that the information would remain private except if the Canadian Food Inspection Agency needed cattle identification in the event of a disease outbreak and trace-back.
“There needs to be a change in the way things are done now,” Elford said.
