Auction market owners say they want to be left out of the dispute between producers who don’t tag their cattle and government inspectors who enforce the new rules.
From the beginning of the cattle identification program, auction market owners said they didn’t want to be caught between the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which enforces the rules, the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency, which operates the program, and cattle producers.
The auction market owners were assured they wouldn’t be hassled if cattle arrived at their markets without ear tags, said Gene Parks, president of the Livestock Markets Association of Canada.
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“It really is an issue between CCIA, CFIA and individual cattle producers; it has nothing to do with me,” said Parks of Pipestone Livestock Sales in Pipestone, Man. “I’ve got more things to do than be a policeman.”
When the program was introduced in 2001, cattle producers were allowed to ship five percent of their cattle without ear tags. That has since been changed to zero and applies equally to lost tags and untagged animals.
Rick Wright of Heartland Livestock in Brandon said auction markets support the national identification system, but worry producers will avoid auction markets if they suspect those markets are enforcing the identification program.
He said his market was fined for shipping sheep from Saskatchewan to Ontario without tags. Before the sheep could be sold, tags had to be shipped from Lethbridge to the Ontario auction barn.
“Don’t hold us responsible,” Wright said.
Under the rules, a producer can’t ship cattle that aren’t tagged, a trucker can’t truck untagged animals and an auction market cannot sell untagged cattle. In some cases all three groups have been fined, said Sheriesse Mass of the CFIA.
The auction markets’ concerns aren’t new, she added.
“I’ve heard the argument a thousand times before about the auction markets being caught in the middle. They aren’t caught in the middle. For one, they don’t have to accept them, or two, they just tag them,” Mass said.
“I don’t see why some of them are complaining as much as they are. If they don’t want to tag them, they don’t have to be a tagging facility. It’s their choice.”
All auction markets in the northern Alberta region are registered tagging facilities that can apply tags for the producer for a fee.
“Some producers are extremely negligent,” she said. “They like passing the responsibility on to someone else but themselves and that’s reality.”
