Cattle ID and traceability ----Australia update

[smcgrath76]

We have been involved at several levels
in this issue, from volunteering to
speak about national ID at producer
forums prior to implementation (that was
dangerous and fun), testing tags, and
our cowherd became part of the BSE
traceback efforts (stressful to say the
least).
I believe the size of the tags is an
issue of read range. It takes a bigger
antenna to read at a commercially viable
read range.
There are also full and half duplex
varieties of tags with the 1/2 having a
larger read range, but the full being
cheaper. All tags were tested for
retention prior to making the approved
CCIA list of tags. We tested some and
lost a pile and the tags never made the
list.
The tag retention trials were designed
to allow for some "slippage" (< 5% I
believe), however I am not sure the
regulations allow for the same thing. I
think the basic traceability system
works pretty well and conceptually is a
good idea. I think the practicality of
range conditions makes going too far
down the road difficult to do, enforce
or pay for. I think the biggest
challenge is lack of common sense from
some of the enforcement. The same
reason different types of cattle and
management systems work in different
places hold true for some of the
proposed traceability requirements. A
good example is reporting livestock
movements beyond a set distance of X
miles. In some ranch country pastures
are multiple times the size of the
proposed distance requirements.
Perhaps uncommon common sense is what we
really need here...I don't see some of
the more extreme proposals being driven
by commerce or trade in any way. By
that I mean, when a customer (potential)
asks for something it is okay as long as
they are willing to pay.

[Happytrails]

SMC. I think you almost said let the market drive traceability...if you did I certainly agree. Mandating the scanning of all cattle will eliminate any premiums.
In regard to using common sense in designing ID tag tracking. Why are they insistent that cattle are scanned at auction markets? None of them stay there for more than a few days. Scanning them into their new location should suffice.
When it comes to responding to a disease outbreak I put my trust in the people with cow manure on their boots to do what is needed. That might be lock the gates, feed and water the cattle, etc. The panel reader on the fence and the person monitoring it just won't be much help. HT

[grassfarmer]

Sadie "I do have proven number of tag loss on tags." Care to share? we need real proven tag retention rates not anecdotal figures drawn up by one producer.
In truth Sean already provided the answer "All tags were tested for
retention prior to making the approved
CCIA list of tags."

HT, again you show your lack of understanding of what would happen in the case of a serious disease outbreak like F M. "When it comes to responding to a disease outbreak I put my trust in the people with cow manure on their boots to do what is needed."

I will give you a little insight of what happened in the UK 2001 outbreak. As soon as the outbreak happened the authorities are behind the 8 ball. Very slowly they mobilise the execution squads to do a kill on infected farms but the disease is rapidly outrunning them. So they start killing on the fringes only leaving infected animals and premisis on the inside of infected zones to be culled later. Soon the army is mobilised to increase the kill capacity - there is no part of this run by people with "manure on their boots" it is Government and organisations equivalent to CFIA. I know people who had their entire stock wrongly culled because officials in an office mixed up the latitude and longitude co-ordinates of the affected farms. There was no way to stop it or appeal the decision - and the whole thing is a media relations disaster.
I had friends whose animals were infected early on who had to continue to feed and care for their animals for another 2 months until they could be culled - by which time they had all been calved and lambed with all the work that requires. The heartache and mental toll was enormous. There was a slaughter man at one landfill kill sites who shot one of his colleagues.
There are the logistics of finding and trucking the materials to burn animals on pyres on farm or later when it gets too big for that trucking animals to purpose built landfill sites. They can only use certain routes to avoid contaminating "clean" areas. All the backhoes and trucks needed must be cleaned, all the vehicles entering and exiting "dirty" areas are hazards. There is no livestock movement to auction or slaughter - there are no exports until months after the last case. Animals must remain on farm and if that entails buying extra feed the same complications of trucking from clean or dirty areas arises. In practice this does not work so you need a "welfare" cull too to prevent animals starving.
I will never forget the pictures my brother sent me looking down into a valley where you know all the farms for miles and the valley is full of smoke - farm after farm with their livestock burning on piles. All livestock die no matter how old or young, purebred multi-generational cattle herds or commercial slaughter stock.
I will do anything in my power to prevent something like this happening in Canada. Part of that is education - you have got to understand the seriousness of the threat. This is not something you can just decide to keep your cattle home for a week until it all blows over. If this were to happen in Alberta don't kid yourself that ABP and ranchers would be organising the response - it would be purely governmental and CFIA.
The biggest thing we can do to reduce the severity and duration of any such disease outbreak is to have a credible tracking system in place. We need to know animal movements and have that information instantly available. That is why we need a tracking system using EIDs read at movement points.

Sure there are points to debate like Sean mentioned about the distance traveled before a movement is considered to have happened, whether 96% or 100% is the tolerance level for enforcement of tagging. We can resolve these issues but please do not throw out the baby with the bathwater and kid yourself that brands and manifests are in any way a credible movement tracking system. We cannot go back to the days of the open range.

[SADIE]

Sumary to consider.

You can only give so much on a thread.

There is full prepartion of this as a Case report that will be given at "public Speaking" next winter. Already have the Veterinary COllege with Interest. A couple of other cattle groups have already inquired.

The hearing is on record and transcripts can be purchased. Closing arguments came from witnesses and CFIA witness that were their words under oath.

1 CFIA witness was CFIA witness. 2 other CFIA witnesses were my witnesses under subpoena at my own exspence.


Many more parts to the closing arguments.

!)Court of Queens bench trial rather than CANADIAN AGRICULTURE REVIEW TRIBUNAL.

2)Cost Recover if defendent wins the case.

3)Accountability with any and all tagging companies. Just within the laat few months CCIA staff are now receiving the Plastic Male RFID eartags that are defective. This work was never done before. Short-term retention was only looked at.

4)Recommended testing in Canadian Cows herds across the country like Turmudee farms, Vermillion Cattle herd, Fairview College cattle herd independant from CCIA and CFIA. with funding from CFIA to set up Long term retention tests.

There is alot more and this is being put together to do WINTER PUBLIC SPEAKING TOURS HOW A CANADIAN CATTLEMAN DEFEND HIMSELF IN COURT.

Other factors to consider is court room proceedure.

Opening statement of facts.

Witness allowed and Expert Witness.

Examination and Cross Examination and final examination

How to prepare evidence in triplicate at the hearing.

Closing arguments--What can be stated in fact from words out of witneesses.

The next hearing in Swift CUrrent I prepared the Cattle Husband and Wife and they did very well on their own.

Tomorrow is in Dauphin Manitoba and that cattlemen has preparation from my hearing to give a better defence.

First presentation could be at the Saskatchewan Veterinary Medicine Association Fall meeting Veterinarians only.

A group in Ontario are looking at inviting me this winter.

All for now.

4)

[Happytrails]

Right on Sadie. Until now the regulators have not been held to account. We need to get the issues out in the open. Thanks for doing more than your part. HT

[Kathy]

grassfarmer, while your concerns are based on a
real life situation (UK 2001), you are taking it to
an extreme in believing that Canada is the same
as the UK. We are not! We have a land base that
has herds spread out. In the event of a disease
outbreak, like FM, the tracking system will in no
way guarantee a herd is disease free; after all
WHERE DID THE DISEASE COME FROM IN THE
FIRST PLACE? I believe the UK 2001 experience
was found to be a "release" from a laboratory
working on vaccines.

Movement will have to halt for a period of time to
allow an incubation period to demonstrate what
herds are and are not diseased - Tags or no
Tags.

One thing I have learned over the last decade is
to not be so "in love", "attached" to the farm and
farm animals. Our government can come at any
time and take our land, especially now with all
the Legislation they have passed in Alberta the
last couple years.

The 2001 UK crisis, with all its burning pyres
(what a joke), like the process was an efficient
burn procedure, and eliminated the disease;
piling dead animals on top of our creosote
soaked Canadian railway ties (ties already shipped
and stored at the UK docks prior to the
outbreak). Yes, it was a very very bad situation
for the producers and others. But the longer
lasting effects of creosote in the water table and
contaminating the air and land, is just as bad.
Mark Purdey had it right, when he disagreed with
the wholesale slaughter of animals that were ill
with non-lifethreatening diseases.

We need to protect our animals from the CFIA
and government regulated animal husbandry
practices. For every few reasonable practices,
they will slip into the works a process that
promotes big business, vertical integration, and
big-brother control of the proletariate.

The 2001 UK Foot/Mouth Crisis with the video
images of shooting herds and burning carcasses
was the UK's 911 media spectacle. It gave FEAR
an image, just like the planes crashing into the
towers on September 11. In the wake of this
indoctrination of FEAR, on both sides of the
Atlantic, governments have pushed forward with
an agenda designed to enslave us all. When fear
over-rides our natural optimistic perspective,
governments and other groups (like Cargill,
Monsanto, BP etc) are able to control and
manipulate our everyday decisions.... leading the
population to even deeper bondage.

Here is an excerpt from "Derry Brownfield's"
newsletter, available by subscribing to "The
Common Sense Chronicle, PO Box 79,
Centertown, MO 65023-0079 USA ($40.00Can):
www.derrybrownfield.com

"There is a story of a bird that each day traded a
feather for a worm. He found this much easier
than scratching and digging for his dinner. He
had a lot of feathers and the man he traded with
had plenty of worms. One feather a day didn't
seem to matter much until his feathers were
nearly all gone and he could no longer fly.

People are just as foolish. Take away their
freedoms over-night and there will be a violent
revolution. But steal it from them gradually, by
disguising it as a security or progress and you
can paralyze an entire nation.

The average life of the world's greatest
civilizations has been 200 years. During this
period each progressed through the following
sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith,
spiritual faith to great courage, courage to liberty,
liberty to abundance, abundance to selfishness,
selfishness to complacency, complacency to
apathy, apathy to dependence, from dependence
into bondage."

[Happytrails]

Thanks Kathy for a realistic scenario in the case we find ourselves with a FMD situation. Apparently a worms eye view of same doesn't afford good perspective. We do need to have contingency plans in place. To place our trust in an unworkable traceability concept is folly. HT

[grassfarmer]

HT, You may draw comfort from what you claim is a "realisatic scenario" outlined by Kathy but I find it's a rather sketchy outline.
Kathy is right to point out the difference of land area, livestock density but missed the biggest point - the lack of sheep here which were the biggest spreader of the disease in the UK. She said the tracking system will in no way guarantee a herd is disease free - true enough that is not the purpose - the purpose is to limit the spread by tracking movements.
For you guys out in eastern Alberta with huge areas and relatively few cows you have got to realise the risk comes from the moving and co-mingling of stock that happens downstream of you - in the auctions, the cattle liners and the feedlots. Realise too that if we were to get an outbreak it would not be announced ahead of time so you can lock your gates and stay home. It would be discovered most likely in a feedlot or packing plant by which time there would be a trail of infection left behind - in the feedlots, cattle auctions, spread by cattle liners maybe even brought to your east country ranches by liners on a back haul after hauling something they didn't know was contaminated. FMD is a highly contagious disease that can live for a period of time anywhere there is a medium like soil or manure and moisture. The ability to track movements in the early stages of an outbreak is what determines whether you can contain it quickly or have it spread to millions of animals. Unfortunately with our current non-tracking system we would be immediately facing a very bad case scenario. That is why I think we need a tracking system.

As for cause - the minor 2007 outbreak resulted from a leak at a lab where they were researching or producing FMD vaccines. The 2001 outbreak was officially linked to a sloppy hog feeding operation using table scraps from restaurants - the classic FMD causal scenario. Not sure I entirely believe that was the cause in this instance but the Government hung the hog operators out to dry anyway.
We live in an era where bio-terrorism is a very real threat and that would be the most likely cause of an outbreak here in my opinion. It would not be hard to intentionally introduce FMD to a livestock population.
I agree the burning pyres was a ridiculous proposition, like something out of the middle ages and that the disease need not lead to slaughter of animals as there is no risk to humans from eating the meat and in many cases the disease itself would burn itself out with many animals only showing minor symptoms and recovering. I know that from my friends that had the disease early in the outbreak and weren't culled until much later due to the backlog - the animals had recovered or were recovering but were culled anyway.
That brings up the whole issue of vaccination for FMD. My Dutch friends tell me that is what they have done for a long time - it's not a big deal. It's political though and needs to be tied in with a countries export policy because many countries will not accept meat off vaccinated animals and certainly not breeding stock.
HT says we need a contingency plan and I would agree with that - unfortunately I don't think we as producers have even begun to seriously have that debate or think about a contingency plan. Other than closing the Man/Ont border what is the plan? do we vaccinate? do we kill and burn? I suspect Government will have done their due diligence though and will have some kind of plan - a traceability program is probably part of it.

[sagewood]

Without raining on your protest parade, may I just say that instead of fighting a tracing system that is obviously here to stay that perhaps it is time to put your time, money and energy into promoting beef and our pasture to plate system and the safety of Canadian beef and the good health benefits derived from eating good Canadian beef.

The first tidbit of news I heard this a.m. was a health advisory stating "while we all know that red meat is bad for us, reasearchers have found that there are some positive health benefits from eating red meat every other day. While all red meat is not created equal, some can be bad for a person such as hamburger and hot dogs". The entire bit about the goodness of red meat in the body would have been lost on most people after they heard the opening line about 'red meat being bad for us'.

Since we have all been losing our shirts for the past 7 years since BSE and since the 'old' guys are getting out b/c they are tired and tired of loosing money and the younger set refuse to work two jobs to support the cow herd--we have seen our Canadian inventory drop by one half with more drop expected this fall. Consummer demand has also dropped--thus our Canadian inventory is still meeting the needs of this country and we are still attempting to export to take up the slack and increase financial returns.

Seems to me it is time for you all to look at the cattle industry as a business--start record keeping--start promoting traceability--start replacing the odd tag that goes missing and come into the 21st century.

Going to court and fussing about having to keep records is just more negative press that this industry simply does not need. Have you not noticed that accountants, veterinarians, feed companies, lawyers, health care workers etc. etc. all have governing bodies who have a set of rules through which they govern their conduct? These governing bodies can enforce these rules through the courts and government--it sets their standards for everyone in that walk of life to work under--raising cattle is no different--either you raise them in a quality setting with set standards or you will be out of the business--consummers demand traceback and humanely raised livestock. Time to get with the program people.

[kato]

I think you'll find that most here are already "with the program", but it seems that we are also paying for the entire thing, while others share in the benefits. That's the crux of the matter. We are the ones who can least afford it, and yet we get the bill.

We kept records before any of this happened. In 1985 I could tell you every animal on the farm, who their mama was, and who their grandma was too. I could tell you which animals were sold when, and what they sold for, as well as what they weighed, and if they had a bad day last Tuesday. Keeping records, tagging, and tracking is not an issue with us on our farm. They've always been regular operating procedure.

If everyone here was making a good living, or at least making the kind of living we used to make pre BSE, I don't think any of these issues would be nearly as high on our radar as they are now.