Dr. Temple Grandin---Improving Animal Welfare A Practical Approach

[SADIE]

Friday Jan 14

List of speakers:

Dr. Donald Broom----World developments in animal welfare.
Dr. Temple Grandin---Improving animal welfare---A Practical Approach
Dr. Dave Chalack---President and CEO Calgary Stampede--Board ALMA,CFIA Advisory--Building An Animal Care Stategy that goes beyond Public Relations.
Plus others

Dr. Temple Grandin---draws the biggest crowd wherever she travels. I heard her 3-4 times over the years. Involved in chute design, slaughter house design and many more. She arrived late Thursday evening. The directors had a meeting with her (I was invited) to show the RFID data, Placement in ears, The RFID tag, She did not know the CFIA laws and didn't want to even know she wanted to keep her talk on just animal behavior in respect to shute handling of cattle, all ages, beef herd proceedures.

Handling beef cattle---the ears---they are very very sensitive. The tag placement deep in the ear (inside 1/4) where on diagram supposed to be---The rip (Mainly twine ----cow, bull) huge problem.

She now has the pictures on the Canadian CCIA tag in ear placement on slides for her next presentations. First time ever she really had to deal with animal behavior and ear-tagging problems to this extreme.

Again strong speaker---- questions she asked from the floor of other experiences. Dr. Joyce Van Donkersgoed gave low of 1%, feedlot situation--bunk feeders, no twine slaughtered 20 months.

Dairy Cows---high retention rate.

Beef Herds---Top practioners (Calgary) using the best tag (after trial and error knowledge)--4% slippage / yr. Tag mechanical breakdown only ---no external rips from twine or brush.

Beef herds--High loss from poorer tag manufactors types--25% ---35%. Tag mechanical breakdown plus the ripped ears (Twine catch or brush --whatever)

Dr. Temple Grandin Strong in her delivery message, again American ended her talk. The problem is in the RFID tag--Lets fix the problem, The PLacement deep in the ear is a problem and re-tagging re-tagging retagging through the cows life a problem, She held the RFID tag Female and Male ---This RFID feels like a "Board" that is a problem compared to the softer ID tags. Fix it or there is definately an animal welfare problem.

Dr. Grandin complemented the Canadian industry in working trying to make individual ID work to develope into Animal tracking and traceability.
She does not know the CFIA laws nor wants to get into it so she doesn't know the ramifications of that at all.

She received a huge applause. Left the room for another meeting at the University Veterinary College with Dr. Joe Stooky and never returned for the bear pit session at the end of the day.

CFIA were present in the room. Well represented.

Three american Veterinary speakers spoke the day before on their practice management in Texas, Mississippi and Another mid-western state. No talk of ID other than the paper backtag that was used here 30 years ago.

[SADIE]

Dr. Donald Broom--Great speaker and very good in the bear pit discussion at the end of the day.

England & Europe---The microchip is getting much cheaper in price and could be the next thing coming.

Discussions came from the floor on scanners and improvements. There was huge discussions from the Alberta Beef Veterinarians in the room about the hydro corridor lines, Yes your 4 bills and the full hall meetings with Keith Wilson's tour. There were many discussion continued and I handed out the CAEPLA LANDOWNER JOURNAL WINTER 2010
2011 from my brief case.

Dr. Broom was specifically asked about rresearch with RFID data and reference to animals near or under these powerlines and the possible effects of the ELECTRONIC MAGNET FIELDS on the RFID DATA in the Tag or microchip. Now hhe wants to go home and get research on that data.??

Dr. Dave Chalack--Graduated my era 75-76. Well known Calgary area with top dairy industry, Alta Genetics, around world embryo work, Wears many hats ALMA, CALGARY STAMPEDE, Very Brilliant well spoken.

Showed the perception of how the public looks on the CALGARY STAMPEDE---as most of you know about the problems.

Now aware of the RFID problems out there in the Beef Cow, BUll, Bison herds. Alot of the problems appears to be from possibly a couple of tagging companies making the whole system break down with too many bad experiences carrying down the successes out there.

Lots of discussions ----starting to reveal the problems of the CCIA and the directions and corrections they are trying to make going forward.


Conclusion is that all the players, CCIA, RFID eartagging companies, Bovine Practicioners, Animal Welfare speakers, World speakers on trade, American Practicions Guest speakers, CFIA possible now seeing the dymanics and the problems that came forward maybe be a forum to help mould the future. This will filter out to the Provincial veterinary associations and down to the practicing veterinarians in your communities that serve you people on agriville.

Clinics in attendance were: Lloydminister, Calgary area, Edmonton area, Brooks, Oyen, Okotoks, Kamloops BC, Virden Manitoba, Weyburn, Estavan, Prince Albert, Turtleford , Williams Lake, Winnipeg area.

[kato]

That sounds like it was a productive couple of days. Good work!

Things will never change unless we all work at it. In this world, if no one complains, that's taken as meaning everyone is happy with the status quo. You never know where you will end up when you take on a challenge, and IMHO, you should never say never.

A lot of us Agri-villers seem to be in the mood to go out and work toward change on a lot of different issues, from tag retention, overzealous bureaucracy , landowner rights, to government liability for damages done, and more.

I say "Go for it".