What happened to age verification with this falls calf run in Saskatchewan

[smcgrath76]

I definitely think tagging for
traceability is important and I have no
issues with the original intent of the
program.
I have always thought age verification
should be optional and if there was a
competitive advantage to doing it, then
it would be done. I definitely do not
support the legislated approach in this
regard.
I can say that while we use Calving
Start Date, we try our best to
accurately and honestly age verify our
calves (not our tags). I promote the
heck out of this fact, and I am
convinced that pre-legislation it was
one of our competitive advantages for
our cattle.
I do agree that buyers pay for quality.
The real challenge is that people see
quality objectively and are often
emotionally attached to their own
cattle.
I think age verification should be
regulated by the marketplace.

[grassfarmer]

SADIE, Who says you need a visible monetary sum to earn a premium? discounting the ones that don't comply has the same effect and it's a concept producers are familiar with through every day cattle selling so it shouldn't be difficult to understand.

15444,
As Kato stated the national ID and age verification process are two different things.
The age verification benefit was brought on post BSE by customers seeking to know the age of our cattle - that remains the case. Future exports to the EU and some Asian countries require this information. They also require it to be honest information. If you or anyone else is caught cheating the system you risk financial penalty but more importantly you are cheating customers who may very well react by stopping buying Canadian beef in future.
I'm more aware of the opportunities to cheat the system than most having seen it once around already in Europe. I know of a cattle dealer there who was charged with forging a dead person's signature on a document to earn premiums on cattle that he was not entitled to. The opportunity exists here to go out and buy cattle that are not age verified, bring them home and retag and age verify them. There is likely potential for a good profit in that but it is criminal activity and you are in fact stealing from the person who sold the un-age verified calves at a discount. If you want to make a stand against the system fair enough - don't age verify your calves but don't cheat the system by taking advantage of fellow producers who are more honest than yourself. Where do you draw the line? are you happy with falsely age verifying cattle or will you move onto forging dead people's signatures?

[15444]

You might consider ID and AV separate, but I don't. Can't have one without the other.

I would really prefer not to ID at all. Make it optional like in the US. In which case the ID itself, let alone AV might actually fetch a premium.

It's mandatory in this country and look how many in the industry are slaves to the cause. Paying outrageous prices for everything from readers to tags, when the system is not even working (i.e. reading results for community pastures in Cattlemen's). Just looking in my catalogue for US RFID tags, the price for a YTEX RFID tag is $2.50. In this country I have heard quotes as much as double that price. In our area, the price is between $3.20 and $3.80 a tag. In the US, you can buy a RFID/Dangle combo for what we pay.

Absolutely ridiculous. Nope, I don't think twice about working this system. If I can make a buck from an idiotic program, I'll do it. Bureaucratic programs shoved down my throat can burn with the rest.

[kato]

So do something to change the rules. It can be done.

[topper]

Found this article on meatingplace and thought it was relevant to this discussion: A Manitoba, Canada, veterinarian has pleaded guilty to two counts of contravening the Health of Animals Act after having admitted to falsely claiming that he inspected them before deeming them suitable for export to the United States, the Toronto Sun reported.

Early Van Assen received a $10,000 fine for taking the owner’s word regarding the age of his cattle instead of performing a proper inspection, the newspaper reported. USDA requires Canadian veterinarians to certify that cattle to be exported to the Unites Sates were born after March 1999, a provision put in place following BSE issues in the early 1990s.

Van Assen claimed he had inspected 42 cows, deemed them suitable for export and filed certification documents. He admitted later in a subsequent interview he did not inspect the cattle and rather took the owner’s word, according to the Sun.

[Happytrails]

Excellent discussion folks. It is what we need to motivate people to demand a say in our industry.

Our ID tag program has always been a public relations exercise. The CCA by luck or design got one of only a handfull of men in Canada who could have successfully sold it to the industry; that being the late Carl Block. He said we should do it so we did but not that happily.

Flushed with that success and handed the perfect storm by BSE our regulators devised grander and grander schemes. They forgot that the ID exercise was still a PR campaign and pretty much a house of cards. It won't support the new programs and is threatening to crash to the ground.

IMHO movement tracking is likely the straw that will break the camel's back. It seems to me that any tracking system based on an identifier that cannot be visually confirmed is doomed to fail. As soon as a second cow is scanned thru the chute you don't know which number each has.

Let's keep on talking sense to the political classes. We need an industry based on credibility and quality not a public relations scam. HT

[grassfarmer]

"We need an industry based on credibility and quality" Just wondering how you see that statement fitting in with some of 15444's statements HT?
Does law breaking, falsifying documents and deliberately miss-identifying the age of animals for personal gain add to either the credibility or quality of our product or our image as Canadian beef producers?

[SADIE]

Too many years of experience owning and operating a strictly bovine Large animal veterinary Clinic. Lots of stories keep coming out of feedlots especially Alberta Feedlots, backgrounding operations. Whoever purchases animals tries to imporve on those animals "somewhat and somehow" so that they can "become in the money". This last fall we have been experiencing to date a "rising cattle market".

15444 thankyou for being candid. The stories coming home with workers that are either Truckers, or feedlot workers also spread the stories within different feedlots.

The circles of practicing veterinarians in rural practice is "shrinking" but these stories are shared amongst us as well.

I ask this question to Alberta Producers. Age verification is mandatory correct?

What is the penalty and how is that enforced to maintain compliance?

How many cow-calf producers would age verify is they could not get a close to total refund on the RFID eartag they purchase?

Just my years of observation and experience with veterinarians. It was much easier to trust a cow-calf operator than the words or actions of a "cattle buyer" or "feedlot operator".

I was fortunate in east-central Alberta to stream-line my practice to strictly cow-calf operators and eliminate all feedlot operators in my practice area.

[kato]

Could someone from Alberta, where age verification is mandatory, tell me what happens to feeders from Saskatchewan and Manitoba, where it is not, when they arrive at an Alberta feedlot?

I record all the numbers of the feeders we buy, and then run them through the database, and over the past four batches, the rate of birthdays that show up on a search is about one in ten.

Since I can search for birthdates attached to tags, that means a slaughter plant can too. Therefore is the paperwork useless? Do they just scan them at the plant and then divert them without paperwork?

I've always suspected that lots of middlemen would be much happier to keep the names of the original owners hidden, and therefore protect their cut by preventing end users from tracking down the good ones at the source. I wonder if those papers we go to all that trouble to print out and sign just get tossed?

[SADIE]

I posted the last comment and then saw your post Kato---

Like I told you on the phone this morning Kato we celebrated our Christmas yesterday.

Will add this here as well

Merry Christmas----2011 we know all will be solved.

[grassfarmer]

SADIE, Are you accusing the feedlots of widespread removal, re-tagging and age verification of calves they buy?
Only one problem with that - unless they maintain a cowherd and have calves born on the place they can't be buying tags and age verifying. If they are they won't be hard to detect and prosecute.
I don't know the monetary penalties for non-compliance but they did an audit on me the first year of the age verification program. Nothing too onerous - pulled a couple of #s at random off the database and then asked me to prove in my records where these numbers were shown, that the d.o.b was correct and then pointed them to the animals in question. They didn't request to run them through the chute to physically check the tags as they were on pasture at the time but I would have been happy to do so if requested.
A simple system, nothing to complain about in my book.

[SADIE]

Greetings Grassfarmer---How long have you been in Canada? You are catching on?

In the last few years there has been some major land purchases in Saskatchewan from a number of Alberta Based feedlots. Some have turned the ground to grass and have run Cows.

Some feedlots have a pen or two if not more of cows on feed---Inventory.

With the higher price of feeders this fall and hopefully in months to come there will be interesting times watching the feedlots in Western Canada.

Cow-herds have collapsed substantially in western Canada. How many feedlots will survive?

Put financial pressure on some feedlot operators and watch how they operate.

Thankyou Kato---My time on the computer dealing with birth certificates of calves when there is no premium paid----Tis worth $$$ also to myself. It won't be done.

[grassfarmer]

Yeah, Sadie but having a couple of pens of cows in a feedlot doesn't give you a calving book and calves on the ground - if they did actually calf some out they would still need to be buying extra tags for the ones they were cheating on. Far easier to spot than ranchers failing to tag their cows.
Face it - it was a ridiculous accusation - the cheating of switching and falsely applying for age verification status has to happen at the cow/calf level.

[15444]

GF, the feedlots could do one of two things. Impersonate a cow/calf producer and buy tags at a dealer out of the way (or online?), or hire an actual cow/calf man to do so. Pay for the cost of the tag and a small premium for the cow/calf guy to do so.

Every piece of government paper has grey areas that can be worked. Some have few, some have many. All depends on how incompetent the government agency is.

[grassfarmer]

They could 15444 but the simple audit process would catch them out every time.

I guess if it's worth all that risk and expense to the feedlot there must be a premium afterall for age verified which rather contradicts SADIE's sentiments in the original post.