CANADA’S animal identification plan is looking better all the time.
Kyodo News out of Tokyo last week reported that a Japanese government mission recently sent to Alberta and Kansas found that Canada’s system of traceback on cattle, the Canadian Cattle Identification Agency system, provided more reliable data than is now available on cattle in the United States.
“Based on the mission report, a farm ministry official said that while resumption of full-scale beef imports from Canada is highly likely if necessary conditions are met, imports of American beef will be substantially limited even when the ban is removed unless accurate production data become available,” Kyodo News reported.
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It would be ironic if Japan opened its borders to Canadian beef before it accepted U.S. imports again, as Hong Kong has done. Ironic because the U.S. has never reported a home-grown case of BSE. The December 2003 case in Washington state, in an animal later proven to originate in Canada, resulted in international bans on U.S. beef. Yet lack of a well-developed traceback system may work against it.
Five years ago, the idea of mandatory national cattle identification in Canada was a sore point. Producers were loathe to release information about their animals and their operations that they feared might be used against them.
Now, it appears that very information will be a major factor in reopening export markets to the Canadian industry.
However, Canada is absolutely not in a position to gloat.
A Reuters report last week, discussing the same foreign mission, said Japanese officials are uncertain about the timing of renewed imports.
“The official noted that the U.S. must make a major effort to establish a standard for certifying the age and origin of cattle, and that Canada, while far ahead in tracing origin, has nothing in its database to indicate date of birth,” said Reuters, quoted in Meatingplace.com.
The American cattle industry is reluctant to embrace a mandatory national identification system, for the same reasons that Canadian cattle producers were initially hesitant. The U.S. could thus be years away from establishing reliable cattle herd data of the type Canada has at its disposal.
The major component now lacking is the inclusion of birth records in the Canadian data. Such records will be crucial to meeting the requirements of countries to which we wish to export.
The CCIA is accepting birth record data from producers who volunteer the information. Inclusion is technologically possible, particularly as electronic tags come into general use. It is now a matter of encouraging producers to record and provide birth data on their animals.
Doing so will be crucial to the cattle industry’s plan to increase exports and reduce reliance on the U.S. market.
