PONOKA, Alta. – Minutes after government officials learned that a cow in Alberta was infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, its history in the province could be traced on computer, said the man who developed the computerized identification system.
An animal can be traced through a brand, owner’s name or the livestock yard where it was sold, said Ken Weir, former general manager of Alberta’s Livestock Identification Services.
“It gives a list of every last animal with that brand and where it was sold and where it came from,” said Weir, who developed the system when the provincial government privatized its brand inspection services in 1998.
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“It takes less than a minute to search for an animal.”
Weir said federal government officials would have been searching the organization’s database the moment BSE was confirmed in a single black cow near Wanham, Alta., on May 16.
Claude Lavigne of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said investigators used several sources to identify the animal’s history.
“The investigation included research into brands, provincial manifest, bills of sale and farm records.”
The time it takes to trace the animal is key to controlling damage to the Canadian economy and its agriculture industry.
The American border was closed to Canadian cattle moments after the news was made public on May 20, shutting down Canada’s biggest export market for cattle and beef.
During the news conference in which the BSE discovery was first announced, Alberta agriculture minister Shirley McClelland stressed the importance of the livestock manifest system in tracing the animal.
“Every animal that moves off the farm has to have a livestock manifest,” she said.
“The trace-out is very good. If an animal moves from an auction market to a farm in Alberta, it must have a livestock manifest.”
It’s estimated that Canada loses $10 million in sales each day the border stays closed.
Since the 1880s, brand inspectors have protected Alberta beef from cattle rustlers and regulated disputes between livestock owners.
In the 1920s Alberta government officials began keeping track of cattle movement to prevent livestock thefts. Every time an animal is moved, the producer is expected to fill out a livestock manifest.
In the glove box of most ranch trucks is the long, narrow livestock manifest book that contains identification information on each animal. Farmers must mark down colour, sex and brands. It was this kind of brand, stored in LIS’s computer database, that helped officials track the BSE-infected cow in
Alberta.
Before the LIS took over the brand inspection system, each cattle sale and movement was entered into a computer in Stettler.
Before an animal could be sold through an auction market, a provincial brand inspector would check the brand to ensure the animal wasn’t stolen. After the auction, the inspector would gather the accompanying livestock manifests and mail them to Stettler.
Today, brand inspectors enter the data after each sale.
The BSE-infected cow was sent to a provincial abattoir for slaughter. Because only 26,000 animals are slaughtered at private abattoirs each year, provincial food inspectors collect the brand inspection information.
“It’s likely the federal government has requested a hard copy of that information,” Weir said.
More than 61/2 million brand inspections are logged into the LIS computer each year. Computerized records exist for the past 11 years and paper records before that.
Saskatchewan has a similar brand inspection system that helps trace ownership, said Louise Greenberg, assistant deputy minister of agriculture.
The provincial government has registered brands for more than 100 years and has operated the brand inspection system since 1945.
In 2001, the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency implemented its bar code ear tags to track animals in case of a disease outbreak.
Because the BSE-infected cow was born in 1997, before the CCIA ear tags were developed, the system could not have tracked the animal back to the original farm.
The national system wasn’t developed to establish ownership, but to trace an animal in case of a disease outbreak.
