USDA Drops animal ID

[chalice]

Try marketing your cattle directly. It only takes a few minutes to print off a birth certificate for your calf crop. Attaching a premise ID number takes even less time. Try turning traceability into a marketing advantage instead of a burden. In my case this years calf crop was sold in 3 groups requiring 1 sheet of paper for each group. Our calves were delivered to their home pen, a province away within 36 hours of being on the cow. The feedlot requested preconditioning as well as a few other things that cost us very little money or time. We negotiated a fair price based on their orders and the savings we were each going to realize. On top of having more money left in my pocket when we were done I will also receive performance data and possibly grading information. I think it was a win win for both of us. In short traceability and preconditioning added value to our calf crop. Whereas if we had marketed our calves the traditional way we wouldn't have gotten paid for $6 worth of vaccine and a half hour on the computer. I know this because I follow markets fairly closely and the same calves that week netted $45 less.

[Happytrails]

Chalice, I think you and I mostly agree. What you did is by all means commendable. I do much of the same. What I'm not in favor of is mandating what should be individual choices for marketing. Let the market decide what information it wants and how much to pay. If mandatory ID tag tracking comes about it will make the CWB look like a shining beacon of liberty.

[littledoggie]

Mandatory collection of information under the Animal Health Act for control of disease is one thing. The arbitrary release of said information for commerce is another. As primary producers, we should have the right to ownership of this information for marketing purposes.

[Kathy]

Here is the link to another article, far more detailed and with important info. regarding the USDA and their own animal traceability program, now called animal disease program.

Author Doreen Hannes, title:
"Easter Bunny Reports: NAIS is Dead" (not!)
http://farmersandfreeholders.org/


I am sorrily disappointed that so many in the ranching community do not realize that this "Premise ID" is your new "License to Operate". As such, it can be yanked if you do not comply with up and coming regulations. Do you like being told how to run your farm?

Personally, I believe the manner in which this was passed in the AB Legislature, was illegal. I will not comply. The article points out that this is an OIE mandate; thanks to our federal governments signing onto World Trade Agreements, we agriculture in Canada) are now being run by the OIE... So, if we are being told what to do by this unelected bureaucracy.... why on Earth do we need our own provincial Agriculture departments? Ah, yes, they are the enforcers for the new rules.

Vote these yahoos out, and wake up. Your freedoms are being eroded.

It is amusing that just as Brian Neillson (in an interview) predicts that in years to come, Canada will not need to sell any beef outside our borders, as we will have increased populations to consume what we produce {stating only 20% goes out our borders right now}... Thus, the new rules for global trade will likely be in place, not to help us export, but to allow other countries to IMPORT beef into Canada.