REGINA – The benefits of traceability are clear, but the cost of implementing and maintaining them is not, said a University of Alberta veterinary professor.
David Hall, speaking at the 27th Canadian Bison Association annual convention in Regina in November, said the benefits are supply management, product differentiation, food safety and quality control.
He said supply management is about how the product is produced and efficiency of production.
“The feedback you get from the marketplace helps you determine whether the cost of your inputs is reasonable, whether you lower your cost in some ways, increase your prices in other ways and enter the marketplace more quickly,” he said.
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Product diversification addresses the possibility of entering different marketplaces. Hall said the information learned from traceback allows the producer to understand how his product entered certain markets.
For most institutions, food safety and quality control are the primary reason for traceability.
“Food safety is the one that most comes to mind with consumers because that’s the one they see. They don’t care about where the food ends up. They buy what they find in the marketplace,” he said.
Piggybacking the beef industry’s database system, Canada’s bison industry is using the radio frequency identification tags.
“The system is not complete,” said Terry Kremeniuk, executive director for the Canadian Bison Association.
Animals need to be identified along with the premise and a record of movement.
“Currently we have the animal identified and now we have to encourage producers to think about the next steps,” he said.
The deadline for implementation of a mandatory national traceability system for livestock is 2011.
“The government made a commitment to have a system in place by the end of 2011 for beef, poultry, hogs and sheep. The bison industry is, in
essence, moving in concert with the beef industry, but we have our own system,” he said.
“We have some figures from the industry in terms of what it will cost per head in the beef industry. That ranges now from $3 or $4 per head per tag per annum all the way up to $10 or $15 per head per tag per annum,” said Hall.
“There’s a lot of other costs that need to be considered,” he said.
Another unresolved issue is how the fixed costs can be allocated so that a consumer can recognize that this benefit is being transferred to them, he said.
