CHARLOTTETOWN, P.E.I. – When the Canadian Cattlemen’s Association met last summer, the plan to require ear tags was controversial and its defenders under siege.
“There were meetings I went to when I wondered if I was going to get punched out,” said Charlie Gracey, former CCA general manager who was involved in writing a business plan for the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency and selling the merits of the tagging.
This year, in the wake of mad cow scares, foot-and-mouth panics and a growing government and consumer emphasis on food safety and traceability, a CCA discussion about cattle identification went off without a word of criticism.
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“It is great to hear so much support for the program and its potential,” said Julie Stitt, who manages the ID agency.
From producers and feedlot operators to packers, the message was that the cattle identification program is an essential tool for an industry looking for market acceptance.
“Quality assurance is replacing price as the main consumer issue,” said Paul Shadbolt of Better Beef Ltd.
Increasingly, customers want to know how and where the food was produced, “who has done what to whom and how can we prove it.”
Greg Conn of Innisfail, Alta., chair of the Alberta Cattle Commission, said a recent trade trip to Japan convinced him the traditional claims of a good product because of Alberta production methods and federal inspection are no longer good enough for buyers.
“What the world is asking is ‘do we have the data to back that claim up?’ ” he said.
The tracing made possible by the ear tags, along with the record-keeping it inspires, are the ticket for the industry to keep up to that market demand, speakers said.
The tagging system took effect July 1 and Stitt said compliance rates have soared. Full compliance, which is defined as at least 95 percent of animals tagged, is required by July 1, 2002.
During the intervening months, Canadian Food Inspection Agency inspectors are following a soft enforcement policy of mainly issuing warnings, although fines are possible.
Inspector Allan MacAulay from Nova Scotia told delegates that compliance “seems to be picking up nicely … We should be sitting in good shape by next July.”
Information issue
Brad Wildeman, from Pound-Maker Agventures Ltd. at Lanigan, Sask., said the existence of the tag data base will lead to electronic tagging and faster adaptation of new technology to keep track of the information that markets will demand.
“We have to be able to assure consumers and we must have the systems in place to prove our claims,” he said.
Stitt said there still are issues to be worked out, including confidentiality. For example, do producers want the information collected to be available to other agencies, including the RCMP, to use?
And when CCA veterinarian Joyce Van Donkersgoed spoke about impending demands for more record-keeping about farm practices, chemical use and other on-farm food safety issues, she acknowledged the uproar that mandatory tagging had created.
More paperwork and consumer demands are coming, she said.
“This is not a conspiracy against you.”
