Producers and industry officials say broken paper trails are a headache for the purebred livestock industry.
According to Calgary horse breeder Brenda Baker, the problem in her business is caused mainly by owners who sell purebred horses but don’t transfer their registration papers to the new owners.
“It happens so much, it’s not even funny.”
She said sellers will often accept a lower price but leave the buyer responsible for arranging and paying for the paper transfer.
Shari Christie, registrar with the Canadian Arabian Horse Registry, agreed.
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“Sometimes people buy a horse with a certificate, but to them it has no meaning,” she said. “They’re not showing, so they just keep it and don’t bother to transfer it.”
Pat Kennedy, assistant registrar and manager of member services with Standardbred Canada, said people will sometimes buy an animal, train it and decide not to keep it, so they don’t transfer the papers from the original owner.
Les Burwash, manager of horse programs for Alberta Agriculture, said many failed horse registration transfers are caused by “people being cheap.”
“If there’s one thing where the horse industry lets itself down, it is in that area of things relative to transfers of registration papers.”
The problem is not limited to horses. Stephane Rouleau with Holstein Canada said his association frequently encounters producers who want to register a calf, but the calf’s dam hasn’t been properly transferred from the previous owner.
Gordon Stephenson, general manager of the Canadian Hereford Association, said papers often aren’t transferred because breeders want to save money or don’t pay attention to the details of their business.
“The reason that’s the most worrisome for breed associations is the fact that breeders and buyers aren’t putting as much value on pedigrees as they used to, so that’s something that we have to address,” Stephenson said.
As far as Baker is concerned, the solution is simple.
“The solution is law,” she said, referring to the Animal Pedigree Act that governs the registration and transfer of ownership of purebred livestock in Canada.
Section 64 of the Animal Pedigree Act states that no person can sell as a purebred “any animal without providing to the buyer thereof within six months after the sale the animal’s duly transferred certificate of registration or certificate of identification.”
This also implies that sellers who have provided the buyer with the fully transferred registration certificate have paid the fee for the transfer.
However, Ron Black, general manager of Canadian Livestock Record Corp., which handles registrations and transfers for 52 breed associations of various species, said no breed association would prevent a buyer from paying for a transfer if that’s the deal that was made between buyer and seller.
The act also provides for fines of up to $50,000 for non-compliance, but Black said this rarely happens. The RCMP have to lay charges but few officers know about the animal pedigree act. Burwash can’t recall a time when the act has been enforced.
“To me, part of that is breed associations’ fault. They don’t have any backbone. They’re trying to service their members and it’s one of their members that’s the guilty party.”
However, even if associations don’t want to intervene, they do want to promote the value of registering animals.
“As the industry progresses and we get more performance and genetic information and put it on pedigrees, maybe there will be more value placed on having a pedigree,” Stephenson said.
